ier position; its value was considered only
secondary, only so far as it helped one to the right understanding
of the revealed scriptures, the Upani@sads. The ultimate truth cannot
be known by reason alone. What one debater shows to be
reasonable a more expert debater shows to be false, and what he
shows to be right is again proved to be false by another debater.
So there is no final certainty to which we can arrive by logic
and argument alone. The ultimate truth can thus only be found
in the Upani@sads; reason, discrimination and judgment are all to
be used only with a view to the discovery of the real purport
of the Upani@sads. From his own position S'a@nkara was not thus
bound to vindicate the position of the Vedanta as a thoroughly
rational system of metaphysics. For its truth did not depend on
its rationality but on the authority of the Upani@sads. But what
was true could not contradict experience. If therefore S'a@nkara's
interpretation of the Upani@sads was true, then it would not contradict
experience. S'a@nkara was therefore bound to show that
his interpretation was rational and did not contradict experience.
If he could show that his interpretation was the only interpretation
that was faithful to the Upani@sads, and that its apparent
contradictions with experience could in some way be explained,

435

he considered that he had nothing more to do. He was not writing
a philosophy in the modern sense of the term, but giving us the
whole truth as taught and revealed in the Upani@sads and not
simply a system spun by a clever thinker, which may erroneously
appear to be quite reasonable, Ultimate validity does not belong
to reason but to the scriptures.

He started with the premise that whatever may be the reason
it is a fact that all experience starts and moves in an error which
identifies the self with the body, the senses, or the objects of the
senses. All cognitive acts presuppose this illusory identification,
for without it the pure self can never behave as a phenomenal
knower or perceiver, and without such a perceiver there would
be no cognitive act. S'a@nkara does not try to prove philosophically
the existence of the pure self as distinct from all other
things, for he is satisfied in showing that the Upani@sads describe
the pure self unattached to any kind of impurity as the ultimate
truth. This with him is a matter to which no exception can be
taken, for it is so revealed in the Upani@sads. This point be