certain ideas about the
unreality of the world and about absolute and relative truth appear in
several treatises both Brahmanic and Buddhist, such as the works of
Sankara and Nagarjuna and the Gauda-padakarikas, and of these the
works attributed to Nagarjuna seem to be the oldest. It must also be
remembered that according to Chinese accounts Bodhidharma preached at
Nanking in 520 a doctrine very similar to the _advaita_ of Sankara
though expressed in Buddhist phraseology.

Of other forms of Vedantism, the best known is the system of Ramanuja
generally called Visishtadvaita.[780] It is an evidence of the
position held by the Vedanta philosophy that religious leaders made a
commentary on the Sutras of Badarayana the vehicle of their most
important views. Unlike Sankara, Ramanuja is sectarian and identifies
his supreme deity with Vishnu or Narayana, but this is little more
than a matter of nomenclature. His interpretation is modern in the
sense that it pursues the line of thought which leads up to the modern
sects. But that line of thought has ancient roots. Ramanuja followed a
commentator named Bodhayana who was anterior to Sankara, and in the
opinion of so competent a judge as Thibaut he gives the meaning of
Badarayana in many points more exactly than his great rival. On the
other hand his interpretation often strains the most important
utterances of the Upanishads.

Ramanuja admits no distinction between Brahman and Isvara, but the
distinction is abolished at the expense of abolishing the idea of the
Higher Brahman, for his Brahman is practically the Isvara of Sankara.
Brahman is not without attributes but possessed of all imaginable good
attributes, and though nothing exists apart from him, like the
antithesis of _Purusha_ and _Prakriti_ in the Sankhya, yet the world
is not as in Sankara's system merely Maya. Matter and souls (_cit_
and _acit_) form the body of Brahman who both comprises and pervades
all things, which are merely modes of his existence.[781] He is the
inner ruler (antaryamin) who is in all elements and all human
souls.[782] The texts which speak of Brahman as being one only without
a second are explained as referring to the state of pralaya or
absorption which occurs at the end of each Kalpa. At the conclusion of
the period of pralaya he re-emits the world and individual souls by an
act of volition and the souls begin the round of transmigration.
Salvation or release from this round is obtained not by