A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.31

c18.31

Far more deserving of attention is the theoretical system of the *Uttara-mīmāṃsā*, or "Second Inquiry." For it not only systematises the doctrines of the Upanishads—therefore usually termed *Vedānta*, or "End of the Veda"—but also represents the philosophical views of the Indian thinkers of to-day. In the words of Professor Deussen, its relation to the earlier Upanishads resembles that of Christian dogmatics to the New Testament. Its fundamental doctrine, expressed in the famous formula *tat tvam asi*, "thou art that," is the identity of the individual soul with God (*brahma*). Hence it is also called the *Brahma-* or *Çārīraka-mīmāṃsā*, "Inquiry concerning Brahma or the embodied soul." The eternal and infinite Brahma not being made up of parts or liable to change, the individual soul, it is here laid down, cannot be a part or emanation of it, but is the whole indivisible Brahma. As there is no other existence but Brahma, the Vedānta is styled the *advaita-vāda*, or "doctrine of non-duality," being, in other words, an idealistic monism. The evidence of experience, which shows a multiplicity of phenomena, and the statements of the Veda, which teach a multiplicity of souls, are brushed aside as the phantasms of a dream which are only true till waking takes place.