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A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s3: 3. The Vedānta

A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s3

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English

Contents

3. The Vedānta

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While the Pūrvamīmāṅsā represents a very primitive need involving no great philosophical skill, the Uttaramīmāṅsā or Vedānta school represents a definite gathering up of the philosophical doctrines of the Upaniṣads in an attempt to frame a system which will embrace them all. The contemporaneity of redaction of the Sūtras is suggested by the fact that while the *Pūrvamīmāṅsā* mentions Ātreya, Bādari, and Bādarāyaṇa, the *Brahma*,¹ also called *Vedānta*, *Uttaramīmāṅsā*, or *Çārīraka-mīmāṅsā*, *Sūtra* cites frequently Jaimini, as well as Ātreya, Āçmarathya, Auḍulomi, Kāçakṛtsna, Kārṣṇājini, and Bādarāyaṇa himself, an indication, as in the case of the *Pūrvamīmāṅsā Sūtra*, that the works were produced not by Bādarāyaṇa or Jaimini² themselves, but by schools expressing their views. The *Brahma Sūtra* deliberately leaves out points on which the Pūrvamīmāṅsā has sufficient matter, and it may be the case that the school regarded themselves as entitled to adopt what they wished of the Pūrvamīmāṅsa, while carrying the philosophical doctrine much further, and rejecting those views of Jaimini which they disliked.

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¹ The apparent reference in the *Bhagavadgītā* (xiii. 4) is doubtless an interpolation.

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² K. A. Nilakantha's effort (IA. l. 167 ff.) to distinguish various Jaimini's and Bādarāyaṇa's, is thus rather misplaced.

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The doctrine of Bādarāyaṇa evidently directed itself strongly against the Sāṁkhya system and the atomism of the Vaiçeṣikas, but its miserable presentation in catchwords leaves us guessing at its meaning. What does seem clear is that Bādarāyaṇa was not a believer in the illusion doctrine of Çaṅkara's school, that he held that individual souls, if derived from the absolute, remained distinct from it and real, and that matter derived also from the absolute had a distinct reality of its own. But this, though probable, cannot be proved because we cannot now recover the verbal explanations which originally accompanied the text, but which were never written down, and so permitted the rise of different interpretations.

(a) The Doctrine of Nonduality and Illusion

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Of these interpretations the most interesting is that which holds that all reality, as we know it, is a mere illusion. This view is preserved for us in a definite shape in the *Gauḍapādīya Kārikās*,³ 215 memorial verses written by Gauḍapāda, whom tradition makes out to be the teacher of Govinda, teacher of Çaṅkara, and therefore of *c.* 700 A.D. There is no doubt that this work, of which the first part deals with the short *Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad*, is strongly influenced by the nihilistic school of Buddhism. It shares with it a rich store of metaphors and similes, designed to make plausible the doctrine of illusion, such as the phenomena of dreams, the Fata Morgana, the rope mistaken in the dark for a stick, nacre mistaken for silver, the reflection in the mirror. In its last section, the Alātaçānti, it adds the brilliant picture of the circle of sparks which a boy makes when he swings a torch without altering the glowing end of the torch, giving a parallel to the manifestation of unreal phenomena from the real absolute. The idea is found in the Buddhist *Laṅkāvatāra* and the *Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad*, but we need not accept the theory that in this doctrine of illusion we have a borrowing from the Buddhists. The idea is suggested strongly in certain passages of the Upaniṣads; it was probably developed by an Aupaniṣada school, affected the growth of Buddhism, and in turn was affected by the brilliant if rather wasted dialectic of Nāgārjuna. Gauḍapāda's existence has indeed been questioned and his Kārikās made out to be those of north-west Bengal (Gauḍapāda), the work being placed before the Sūtra, but this is clearly untenable.¹

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³ Ed. ĀnSS. 10, 1911; trans. P. Deussen, *Sechzig Upanishad's des Veda*, pp. 537ff. Cp. Vidhusekhara Bhattacarya, IHQ. i. 119 ff., 295 ff., who contends that the *Upaniṣad is based on the Kārikās*. For the school see M. Sarkar, *System of Vedantic Thought and Culture*; Hiriyanna, POCM. 1924, pp. 439 ff., on Bhartṛ-Prapañca.

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¹ M. Walleser, *Der ältere Vedānta* (1910).

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The full defence and exposition of the illusion theory with its insistence on Advaita, absence of any duality, is due to Çaṅkara, who may have been born in 788 and may have died or become a Sannyāsin in 820, and who, at any rate, worked *c.* A. D. 800. The biographies alleged, absurdly, to be by Ānandagiri, his pupil, the *Çaṅkaravijaya*,² and Mādhava's *Çaṅkaradigvijaya*³ are worthless, and many works attributed to him are probably not his. But many commentaries on the Upaniṣads, one on the *Bhagavadgītā*,⁴ and the *Bhāṣya*⁵ on the *Brahma Sūtra* are genuine, nor need we doubt the ascription of the *Upadeçasāhasrī*,⁶ three chapters in prose and nineteen in verse, or various shorter works, including lyrics of considerable power and the *Ātmabodha*⁷ in sixty-seven stanzas with commentary. Philosophically, Çañkara is remarkably ingenious in his key to the Upaniṣads, the finding of a higher and a lower knowledge, which similarly allows him to conform to the whole apparatus of Hindu belief on the lower plane, while on the higher he finds no true reality in anything; his logic, it has well been said, starts by denying the truth of the proposition A is either B or not B. His dialectical skill is very great, and, though he doubtless misrepresents Bādarāyaṇa, he does more justice to the Upaniṣads in so far at least as they seem to consider that at death the soul when released is merged in the absolute and does not continue to be distinct from it. In style Çañkara's *Bhāṣya* is unquestionably far advanced from the dialogue tone of the *Mahābhāṣya* or the *Bhāṣyas* of Vātsyāyana or Çabarasvāmin. It has taken on the style of a lecture, with longer sentences, longer and more compounds, more involved constructions, fewer verbal and more nominal forms. But it is still far removed from the formalism of the later philosophical texts, and the author is not unwilling to show his command over the more difficult and unusual grammatical usages.

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² Ed. BI. 1864-8.

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³ Ed. ĀnSS. 22.

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⁴ B. Faddegon, *Çamkara's Gītābhāṣya* (1906).

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⁵ Ed. ĀnSS. 21; trans. G. Thibaut, SBE. xxxiv and xxxviii; cf. Kokileswar Sastri, *Advaita Philosophy* (1924); ii. 1 and 2 ed. and trans. Belvalkar, Poona, 1923.

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⁶ Ed. *Pandit*, iii-v.

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⁷ Ed. Hall, Mirzapore, 1852.

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Çañkara is credited with the authorship of the text or a comment on the *Hastāmalaka*¹ which in fourteen verses plays on the refrain which asserts that the self as the form of eternal apprehension is all in all. To pupils of his are attributed expositions of his system; thus Padmapāda wrote the *Pañcapādikā*² on the first five books, and was commented on by Prakāçātman; Sureçvara wrote in prose and memorial verses the *Naiṣkarmyasiddhi*³ to prove that knowledge alone achieves release, and a paraphrase, the *Mānasollāsa*,⁴ of the *Dakṣiṇāmūrtistotra* of his master. His pupil Sarvajñātman wrote the *Saṁkṣepaçārīraka*,⁵ a summary of the *Bhāṣya*, while *c.* 850 Vācaspati Miçra wrote the *Bhāmatī*,⁶ which is invaluable for its knowledge of Buddhist views *inter alia*. Mādhava again in his *Pañcadaçī*,⁷ written in part with Bhāratītīrtha, and *Jīvanmuktiviveka*⁸ definitely supports Çaṅkara's views. From a different standpoint Çrīharṣa, the poet, in his *Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya*,¹ sought, by proving all other views to be contradictory, to establish that all knowledge is vain and that the doctrine of Çaṅkara is therefore unassailable. Other treatises are innumerable, especially in the later Middle Ages, but the *Vedāntasāra*² of Sadānanda (*c.* 1500) is of importance because it shows the elaborate confusion of Sāṁkhya tenets with the Vedānta to form a complex and ingenious but quite unphilosophical whole. The *Vedāntaparibhāṣā*³ of Dharmarāja is well known as a manual of the modern school.

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¹ Ed. and trans. IA. ix. 25 ff.

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² Ed. VizSS. 2, 1891–2.

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³ Ed. BSS. 38, 1891; 2nd ed. by Hiriyanna, 1925.

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⁴ Cf. JPASB. 1908, pp. 97 f.

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⁵ Bhandarkar, *Report*, 1882–3, pp. 14 f., 202.

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⁶ Ed. BI. 1876–80.

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⁷ Ed. *Pandit*, N.S. v, vi, and viii.

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⁸ Ed. ĀnSS. 20, 1889.

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¹ Trans. IT. i-v.

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² Trans. G. A. Jacob, London, 1904.

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³ Ed. and trans. A. Venis, *Pandit*, N.S. iv-vii.

(b) Rāmānuja

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A very different view of the Upaniṣads and Sūtra is presented by Rāmānuja, who died about 1137. Son of Keçava and Kāntimatī, he studied at Kāñcī under the Advaita philosopher Yādavaprakāça, but abandoned his teaching for that of Yāmuna whom he succeeded as head of a Vaiṣṇava sect, and at whose request he wrote his *Çrībhāṣya*⁴ on the *Brahma Sūtra*. Among other works he wrote a *Gītābhāṣya*,⁵ attacked in the *Vedārthasaṁgraha*⁶ the illusion theory, summarized his *Bhāṣya* in the *Vedāntadīpa*⁷ and gave a convenient summary of his doctrine in the *Vedāntasāra*. His views were defended against those of Çaṅkara in the *Vedāntatattvasāra*⁸ of Sudarçana Sūri, and expounded in the *Yatīndramatadīpikā*⁹ of Çrīnivāsa. Rāmānuja claims to represent a long tradition, citing the Vākyakāra, the Vṛttikāra Bodhāyana, and Dramiḍācārya, who was known to Çaṅkara, and he relies on the *Çāṇḍilya Sūtra* as revealing the true doctrine of the Sūtra. In essentials he differs from Çaṅkara; if in a sense there is an absolute whence all is derived, the individual souls and matter still have a reality of their own, and the end of life is not merger in the absolute but continued blissful existence. This state is to be won by Bhakti, faith in and devotion to God. His view of matter permits him to adopt largely the Sāṁkhya principles.¹

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⁴ Ed. BI. 1888 ff.; trans. G. Thibaut, SBE. xlviii; cf. xxxiv.

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⁵ Ed. Bombay, 1893.

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⁶ Ed. *Pandit*, N.S. xv-xvii.

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⁷ Ed. BenSS. 69-71.

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⁸ Ed. *Pandit*, N.S. ix-xii.

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⁹ Ed. ĀnSS. 50; trans. R. Otto, Tübingen, 1916.

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¹ Cf. Keith, *ERE.* x. 572 ff.

(c) Other Commentators

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No other comment can be compared in importance with those of Çaṅkara and Rāmānuja, the former representing the most sustained intellectual effort of Indian thought, the latter presenting a theory of the world which has many similarities to popular Christian belief, and which may through the Nestorians actually have been affected by Christian thought. Nimbārka, who is reputed a pupil of Rāmānuja, wrote a *Vedāntapārijātasaurabha*, commenting on the Sūtra and a *Siddhāntaratna* in ten Çlokas summing up his system. Viṣṇusvāmin, in the thirteenth century, developed a new aspect of theory which was used by Vallabha (1376-1430) when he wrote his *Aṇubhāṣya*² on the Sūtra and propounded a doctrine of Bhakti in which the teacher on earth is regarded as divine and receives divine honours. More distinctive is the dualism of Madhva³ or Ānandatīrtha, who commented on seven of the important Upaniṣads, the *Bhagavadgītā*, the *Brahma Sūtra*, and the *Bhāgavata Purāṇa*, while a number of independent tracts, including the *Tattvasaṁkhyāna*,⁴ set out his principles briefly. What he insists on is the existence of five fundamental dualisms, Dvaita, whence his system derives its name, as opposed to the Advaita of Çaṅkara and the Viçiṣṭādvaita, qualified nondualism or the nonduality of that which is qualified, of Rāmānuja. A summary of the views of Rāmānuja, Viṣṇusvāmin, Nimbārka, and Madhva is given in the *Sakalācāryamatasaṁgraha*⁵ of Çrīnivāsa.

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² Ed. *BI.* 1888-97.

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³ Date perhaps 1197-1276; but cf. *EI.* vi. 260 (1238-1317). His works are ed. Kumbhakonam, 1911.

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⁴ Ed. and trans. H. von Glasenapp, *Festschrift Kuhn*, pp. 326 ff.; *Madhva's Philosophie* (1923).

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⁵ See R. Otto, *Visnu-Nārāyana*, pp. 57 ff.

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