Brahma Sutras (Shankaracharya)

by George Thibaut | 1890 | 203,611 words

English translation of the Brahma sutras (aka. Vedanta Sutras) with commentary by Shankaracharya (Shankara Bhashya): One of the three canonical texts of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. The Brahma sutra is the exposition of the philosophy of the Upanishads. It is an attempt to systematise the various strands of the Upanishads which form the ...

44. Or (if) in consequence of the existence of knowledge, &c. (Vāsudeva, &c. be taken as Lords), yet there is non-exclusion of that (i.e. the objection raised in Sūtra 42).

Let us then--the Bhāgavatas may say--understand by Saṅkarṣaṇa, and so on, not the individual soul, the mind, &c., but rather Lords, i.e. powerful beings distinguished by all the qualities characteristic of rulers, such as pre-eminence of knowledge and ruling capacity, strength, valour, glory.

All these are Vāsudevas free from faults, without a substratum (not sprung from pradhāna), without any imperfections. Hence the objection urged in Sūtra 42 does not apply.

Even on this interpretation of your doctrine, we reply, the 'non-exclusion of that,' i.e. the non-exclusion of the impossibility of origination, can be established.--Do you, in the first place, mean to say that the four individual Lords, Vāsudeva, and so on, have the same attributes, but do not constitute one and the same Self?--If so, you commit the fault of uselessly assuming more than one Lord, while all the work of the Lord can be done by one. Moreover, you offend thereby against your own principle, according to which there is only one real essence, viz. the holy. Vāsudeva.--Or do you perhaps mean to say that from the one highest Being there spring those four forms possessing equal attributes?--In that case the objection urged in Sūtra 42 remains valid. For Saṅkarṣaṇa cannot be produced from Vāsudeva, nor Pradyumna from Saṅkarṣaṇa, nor Aniruddha from Pradyumna, since (the attributes of all of them being the same) there is no supereminence of any one of them. Observation shows that the relation of cause and effect requires some superiority on the part of the cause--as, for instance, in the case of the clay and the jar (where the cause is more extensive than the effect)--and that without such superiority the relation is simply impossible. But the followers of the Pāñcarātra do not acknowledge any difference founded on superiority of knowledge, power, &c. between Vāsudeva and the other Lords, but simply say that they all are forms of Vāsudeva, without any special distinctions. The forms of Vāsudeva cannot properly be limited to four, as the whole world, from Brahman down to a blade of grass, is understood to be a manifestation of the supreme Being.

Like what you read? Consider supporting this website: