The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1.8

v2.c40.s7.t1.8

and later by Spinoza in his doctrine of modes of the one substance, God. The alternative view³ is to regard the whole as frankly realistic; the name is not a mere name in the sense of disguising a reality; on the contrary it serves to mark out a reality, just as the phrase *nāma-rūpa* can be used to designate a concrete individual made up of intellectual and other faculties and matter. In this case we have a doctrine frankly pantheistic, but not of illusion. The difficulty of deciding is increased by the uncertainty of the correct rendering of the text, which Deussen interprets as directly asserting that ‘change is a mere matter of words, a simple name’, treating the words *vācārambhaṇaṁ vikāro nāmadheyam* as a distinct sentence, instead—as is possible—of taking it as a predicate description, ‘a matter of words, a change, a simple name’, and it would be unwise to draw any far-reaching conclusion from the passage.