The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c5.s3.t3.22

c5.s3.t3.22

These eternal species of things, as they are stored up in the Veda as the everlasting repository of all wisdom and knowledge, are, however, for our author not mere forms (*ākṛiti*, *εἶδος*), but the conception of them, exactly as in Plato (Soph. p. 247 D. ff.) approaches that of the efficient powers (*çakti*, *δύναμις*), from which the universe, after its disappearance, originates again and again; p. 303, 1: “This world in truth “disappears, but in such fashion that the powers remain, and “these powers are the root from which it comes forth anew; “for otherwise we should have an effect without a cause. Now “it cannot be assumed that the powers [from which the world “comes forth anew] are different in kind [from those from which “it formerly came forth]. Therefore it must be granted that, “in spite of the constantly repeated interruption [of the course “of the world], a necessary determination (*niyatatvam*) exists “in the beginningless *Samsāra* for the [newly] developing series “of worlds, as the earth etc., for the series of groups of living “beings, gods, animals and men, and for the different con“ditions of castes, *Āçrama’s*, duties and rewards, like the “necessary determination in the correlation of the [five] sense“organs with the [five] elements: for in the case of these “also, we cannot admit as possible a difference for each new “creation, so that there might be a sixth sense-organ and “element.⁴⁴ While therefore the process of the world in all “world-periods (*kalpa*) is similar and makes it possible [in a “new creation] to be guided according to the process in the “former world-period, therefore at every creation the differences “of the same names and forms are present in the mind of the “creators (īçvarāḥ cf. n. 41), and in consequence of the likeness “of names and forms it happens that, even if a return of the “world by means of a collective evolution and a collective “disappearance is maintained, yet the authority and so forth “of the word of the Veda suffers no injury.”