entation and reabsorption) of this world
proceed.' What, we must ask, is this Sutra meant to define?--That
Brahman, we are inclined to answer, whose cognition the first Sutra
declares to constitute the task of the entire Vedanta; that Brahman
whose cognition is the only road to final release; that Brahman in fact
which /S/a@nkara calls the highest.--But, here we must object to
ourselves, the highest Brahman is not properly defined as that from
which the world originates. In later Vedantic writings, whose authors
were clearly conscious of the distinction of the higher absolute Brahman
and the lower Brahman related to Maya or the world, we meet with
definitions of Brahman of an altogether different type. I need only
remind the reader of the current definition of Brahman as
sa/k/-/k/id-ananda, or, to mention one individual instance, refer to the
introductory /s/lokas of the Pa/nk/ada/s/i dilating on the sa/m/vid
svayam-prabha, the self-luminous principle of thought which in all time,
past or future, neither starts into being nor perishes (P.D. I, 7).
'That from which the world proceeds' can by a /S/a@nkara be accepted
only as a definition of I/s/vara, of Brahman which by its association
with Maya is enabled to project the false appearance of this world, and
it certainly is as improbable that the Sutras should open with a
definition of that inferior principle, from whose cognition there can
accrue no permanent benefit, as, according to a remark made above, it is
unlikely that they should conclude with a description of the state of
those who know the lower Brahman only, and thus are debarred from
obtaining true release. As soon, on the other hand, as we discard the
idea of a twofold Brahman and conceive Brahman as one only, as the
all-enfolding being which sometimes emits the world from its own
substance and sometimes again retracts it into itself, ever remaining
one in all its various manifestations--a conception which need not by
any means be modelled in all its details on the views of the
Ramanujas--the definition of Brahman given in the second Sutra becomes
altogether unobjectionable.

We next enquire whether the impression left on the mind by the manner in
which Badaraya/n/a defines Brahman, viz. that he does not distinguish
between an absolute Brahman and a Brahman associated with Maya, is
confirmed or weakened by any other parts of his work. The Sutras being
throughout far from direct in their enunciations, we shall h