otence. Those passages, on
the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as
transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal
intelligence, Ramanuja is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has
to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system.
The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent
the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman; Ramanuja
cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation
carried as far as possible. /S/a@nkara, on the other hand, by skilfully
ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to
find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks
of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set
forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the
author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where
the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world
become somewhat crude and gross, Hira/n/yagarbha and Viraj are summoned
forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Viraj Mr. Gough remarks
(p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads
for the purusha of the ancient /ri/shis, the divine being out of whom
the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we
substitute for the 'poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox
Vedanta system--for the Upanishads give no indication whatever that by
their purusha they understand not the simple old purusha but the Viraj
occupying a definite position in a highly elaborate system;--but the
mere phrase, 'providing a place' intimates with sufficient clearness the
nature of the work in which systematisers of the Vedantic doctrine are
engaged.

/S/a@nkara's method thus enables him in a certain way to do justice to
different stages of historical development, to recognise clearly
existing differences which other systematisers are intent on
obliterating. And there has yet to be made a further and even more
important admission in favour of his system. It is not only more
pliable, more capable of amalgamating heterogeneous material than other
systems, but its fundamental doctrines are manifestly in greater harmony
with the essential teaching of the Upanishads than those of other
Vedantic systems. Above we were unable to allow that the distinction
made by /S/a@nkara between Brahman and I/s