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The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c7.s1: XV. Preliminary Remarks and Arrangement

The System of the Vedânta according to Bâdarâyana's Brahma-Sûtras and Çankara's Commentary c7.s1

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XV. Preliminary Remarks and Arrangement

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As before, our efforts will be directed, in the further course of our work, to the most faithful reproduction of the thoughts of Bâdarâyaṇa and Çaṅkara; we shall therefore abstain from all liberties with these thoughts and shall indicate unmistakably as such our own incidental remarks. This fidelity extends to the whole material content of the work which we have to analyse, but not to its form as well; we take the thoughts as we find them, but in their arrangement and systematic connection, we allow ourselves to be guided only by the inner necessity which lies in the coordination of thought itself; this frequently compels us to deviate considerably from the arrangement of the original work.

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That the latter does not in fact correspond to the nature of the subject, is due to several causes. To begin with, the tendency of the Brahmasûtras is chiefly polemical. The controversy with the opponents of the Vedânta teaching, which we, in following out our present aim, only introduce when it sheds new light on the system itself, is put in the foreground by our authors; while the most essential dogmas not seldom receive a subordinate treatment, just because they are not new and strange to Indian thought, as they are to us, but are matters of common currency and to a certain extent self-evident. Moreover it is the chief endeavour of the philosophers of the Vedânta to derive all their teachings directly from the Veda, and only in passing and as an appendix to show their rational basis although this is by no means lacking; thus what is really the fundamental idea often appears as a dependent thought. Besides this it is characteristic of Indian philosophers, that on the one hand they exhibit wonderfully profound conceptions reached by no other people of antiquity, and at the same time, on the other hand, a total lack of feeling for æsthetic form; in consequence of this they constantly allow themselves to drift without organising their material and are chiefly guided by the desire to find a *pro and contra* for every question, thus satisfying a highly developed taste for dialectic disputation, whether this leads to an explanation of the subject, or merely hinders and confuses it.⁹³ The consequence is, that the same fundamental thoughts are dealt with again and again to the point of weariness, without a true insight into their connection with the system as a whole, and thereby an insight into the thoughts themselves, being gained after all.

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⁹³ Great as is the resemblance in this, to the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, yet in other ways the contrast is as great: there we have the Bible, here the Veda (cf. note 52), there Aristotle, here original thought, there a compulsory belief, here a choice of the Vedic basis from free conviction.

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If while reproducing the content of the system of the Vedânta we did not at the same time refrain from reproducing its external form as it comes before us in the Brahmasûtras, it would be difficult to perceive the excellence of Indian thought; Colebrooke's praiseworthy study has had so little effect, for the sole reason that, apart from its brevity and the (very questionable) introduction of different commentaries, it confines itself to unmethodical extracts from the original work; by this course a full insight into the inner unity of the system is lost, not only by the reader, but even by the writer himself; the outline of the teaching according to the Vedânta-sâra, which was added as an appendix from a sense of this deficiency, cannot supply it, because it builds up the system on a basis essentially different from that of Çankara.

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The confusion in the treatment of the work on which we are engaged, is nowhere more noticeable than in the department of Cosmology, treated in 1, 4, 23—2, 3, 15, along with which are to be taken the conclusion of 2, 4 and 3, 2 (namely 2, 4, 20—22 and 3, 2, 38—41) and certain sections of the Division on Transmigration 3, 1 (e. g. 3, 1, 20—21. 3, 1, 24).

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In Chapter VI and the translations from 4, 3, 14 which are added to it as an appendix, we have shown the existence of the antithesis between the exoteric and esoteric doctrine in all parts of the system. If this antithesis exists, it cannot of course fail to be decisive for the disposition of the materials. But this is not the case with our authors: in their Section on Cosmology they give a general sketch of the exoteric teaching as to Creation, thereby involving themselves in a series of contradictions, which they seek to explain by appeals to the esoteric teaching, and then go on quietly with their empirical picture of the universe, just as if nothing had happened, while the whole realism on which this picture rests has been again and again overthrown and exposed in all its inadequacy. Nowhere do we find sharp lines of demarcation; but rather we have a tendency (very pronounced in the passage above page 110) to explain the exoteric passages of Scripture in the sense of the esoteric, an attempt which, especially in the Section on Cosmology, has given rise to an enquiry, as difficult as it is unsatisfactory, into the idea of causality.

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In order to bring clearness into the subject, and yet in no wise to do violence to our authors, we shall first of all treat of Brahman as Creator (Chap. XVI), and then (Chap. XVII) of the creation of nature, taking both in the exoteric sense, after which the few traces of natural science scattered here and there in the work can be gathered together. In another chapter (XVIII) we shall bring together all the problems that occur on our way, whose explanation our authors have reached by passing over to the esoteric teaching as to nature. Before we turn to the latter, we must deal further with our philosophers' conceptions of the idea of causality (Chap. XIX), for in it they find the justification of the esoteric teaching of the identity of the world with Brahman, apart from purely theological arguments. Only after explaining this doctrine of identity (Chap. XX), can the problems raised three chapters earlier find the solution dependent on this doctrine, according to the materials existing in the original work (Chap. XXI).

Cites (1)