The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c7.s7.1

c7.s7.1

The cosmological problems which we gathered together in Chapter XVIII, above p. 250ff., with their respective solutions, are found in the original work in part before, and in part after, the exposition of the doctrine of identity. Our re-arrangement, and the division of the problems into two separate chapters, with the doctrine of identity between them, is justified by the fact that the raising of these problems is only possible from an empirical standpoint, and before the doctrine of identity is put forward, while their complete solution can only be given after this doctrine. If our authors follow a different course, it is because the difference between the empirical and metaphysical standpoints (*vyāvahārikī* and *pāramārthikī avasthā*, above p. 106ff.) so distinctly made by them, is imperfectly carried out in their work. So far as this shortcoming can be supplied by a mere re-arrangement, we have believed ourselves justified in supplying it, and, in doing this, we in no case go further than a translator who adds to a work the improvements suggested by its author; when, however, as we shall see, the solution of the cosmological problems is first sought from an empirical standpoint, and only when this method fails is the metaphysical teaching of identity called in, we do not hold ourselves bound to remedy this; on the contrary, the fluctuations between the empirical and metaphysical standpoints, as we shall see further on, must remain untouched, as historical monuments of a stage through which the philosopher first struggled to fuller clearness, without entirely effacing from his work the traces of the intermediate stage he had passed through. It is also possible, and many indications speak for it, (cf. above pp. 28 ff. 139 and notes 17. 45. 21. 22), that the form of the Commentaries to the Brahmasûtras as we have them, bears the imprint of many hands; but these signs are too vague, and the whole work has too slight an individuality, for us to convert this possibility into a definite hypothesis.