to Cankara all difference is illusion; while according to R[=a]m[=a]nuja brahma is not homogeneous, but in the diversity of the world about us he is truly manifested.  Cankara’s m[=a]y[=a] is R[=a]m[=a]nuja’s body of (brahma) the Lord.  Cankara’s personal god exists only by collusion with illusion, and hence is illusory.  The brahma of R[=a]m[=a]nuja is a personal god, the omnipotent, omniscient, Lord of a real world.  Moreover, from an eschatological point of view, Cankara explains salvation, the release from re-birth, sams[=a]ra, as complete union with this unqualified brahma, consequently as loss of individuality as well as loss of happiness.  But R[=a]m[=a]nuja defines salvation as the departure from earth forever of the individual spirit, which enters a heaven where it will enjoy perennial bliss[65].

R[=a]m[=a]nuja’s doctrine inspires the sectarian pantheism of the present time.  In this there is a metaphysical basis of conduct, a personal god to be loved or feared, the hope of bliss hereafter.  In its essential features it is a very old belief, far older than the philosophy which formulates it[66].  Thus, after the hard saying “fools desire heaven,” this desire reasserted itself, and under R[=a]m[=a]nuja’s genial interpretation of the Ved[=a]nta S[=u]tras the pious man was enabled to build up his cheerful hope again, withal on the basis of a logic as difficult to controvert as was that of Cankara himself[67].

Thus far the product of Vedantism is deism.  But now with two steps one arrives at the inner portal of sectarianism.  First, if brahma is a personal god, which of the gods is he, this personal All-spirit?  As a general thing the Vedantist answers, ‘he is Vishnu’; and adds, ’Vishnu, who embraces as their superior those other gods, Civa, and Brahm[=a].’  But the sectary is not content with making the All-god one with Vishnu.  Vishnu was manifested in the flesh, some say as Krishna, some say as R[=a]ma[68].  The relation of sectary to Vishnuite, and to the All-spirit deist, may be illustrated most clearly by comparison with Occidental religions.  One may not acknowledge any personal god as the absolute Supreme Power; again, one may say that this Supreme Power is a personal god, Jehovah; again, Jehovah may or may not be regarded as one with Christ.  The minuter ramifications of the Christian church then correspond to the sub-sects of Krishnaism or Ramaism.[69]

The Occidental and Oriental conceptions of the trinity are, however, not identical.  For in India the trinity, from the Vishnuite point of view, is an amalgamation of Civa and Brahm[=a] with Vishnu, irrespective of the question whether Vishnu be manifest in Krishna or not; while the Christian trinity amalgamates the form that corresponds to Vishnu with the one that corresponds to Krishna.[70] To the orthodox Brahman, on the other hand, as Williams has very well put it, Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, who is himself only an incarnation, that is, a form, of God.