A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s2.3

c33.s2.3

The twelve books of Sūtras¹ give often the impression of not very effective compilation. They were commented on by Upavarṣa and later by Çabarasvāmin, both of whom wrote also on the *Brahma Sūtra* of the Vedānta. Jacobi holds that from the first the Pūrvamīmāṅsā and the Vedānta, or Uttaramīmāṅsā were one school, and that it was only later through Kumārila and Çaṅkara that they were differentiated. This, of course, would give the Pūrvamīmāṅsā a very different aspect, as merely a part of a philosophy, not the whole, but the contention seems dubious, and the syncretism of the systems seems rather to be due to the commentators. Çabarasvāmin seems to have known the nihilistic school of Buddhism, perhaps also the idealistic, and he has a definite theory² of the soul which seems to regard it as produced from the absolute Brahman, but as thereafter existing independently for ever, a view which recurs in Rāmānuja; that this is really the doctrine of the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* ascribed to Yājnavalkya must be emphatically denied.