the view that in the Pancaratra all the other
doctrines are comprised."[585]

The true tradition of the Upanishads he contends has been distorted by
"manifold opinions," among which the doctrine of Sankara was no doubt
the chief. That doctrine was naturally distasteful to devotional
poets, and from the time of Nathamuni onwards a philosophic reaction
against it grew up in Srirangam. Ramanuja preaches the worship of a
loving God, though when we read that God produces and reabsorbs the
universe in sport, we find that we are farther from Christianity than
we at first supposed. There is a touch of mythology in the mention of
Lakshmi[586] but it is clear that Ramanuja himself had little liking
for mythology. He barely mentions Rama and Krishna in the Sri
Bhashya nor does he pay much attention to the consort of the deity. On
the other hand he shows no sign of rejecting the ritual and
regulations of the Brahmans. He apparently wished to prove that the
doctrine of salvation by devotion to a personal god is compatible with
a system as strictly orthodox as Sankara's own.

I shall treat elsewhere of his philosophy, known as the
Visishtadvaita or non-duality, which yet recognizes a distinction
between God and individual souls. The line of thought is old and at
all periods is clearly a compromise, unwilling to deny that God is
everything and yet dissatisfied with the idea that a personal deity
and our individual transmigrating souls are all merely illusion.
Devotional theism was growing in Ramanuja's time. He could not break
with the Upanishads and Vedantic tradition but he adapted them to the
needs of his day. He taught firstly that the material world and human
souls are not illusion but so to speak the body of God who comprises
and pervades them: secondly this God is omniscient, omnipresent,
almighty and all-merciful, and salvation (that is mukti or deliverance
from transmigration) is obtained by those souls who, assisted by his
grace, meditate on him and know him; thirdly this salvation consists
not in absorption into God but in blissful existence near him and in
participation of his glorious qualities. He further held[587] that God
exists in five modes, namely: (_a_) Para, the entire supreme spirit,
(_b_) the fourfold manifestation as Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradyumna
and Aniruddha, (_c_) incarnations such as Rama and Krishna, (_d_)
the internal controller or Antaryamin according to the text[588] "who
abiding in the soul rules