’apare tu vadina/h/ paramarthikam eva jaiva/m/ rupam iti manyante asmadiya/s/ ka ke/k/it,’ i.e. other theorisers again, and among them some of ours, are of opinion that the individual soul as such is real.’  The term ‘ours,’ here made use of, can denote only the Aupanishadas or Vedantins, and it thus appears that Sa@nkara himself was willing to class under the same category himself and philosophers who—­as in later times the Ramanujas and others—­looked upon the individual soul as not due to the fictitious limitations of Maya, but as real in itself; whatever may be the relation in which they considered it to stand to the highest Self.

From what precedes it follows that the Vedantins of the school to which Sa@nkara himself belonged acknowledged the existence of Vedantic teaching of a type essentially different from their own.  We must now proceed to enquire whether the Ramanuja system, which likewise claims to be Vedanta, and to be founded on the Vedanta-sutras, has any title to be considered an ancient system and the heir of a respectable tradition.

It appears that Ramanuja claims—­and by Hindu writers is generally admitted—­to follow in his bhashya the authority of Bodhayana, who had composed a v/ri/tti on the Sutras.  Thus we read in the beginning of the Sri-bhashya (Pandit, New Series, VII, p. 163), ’Bhagavad-bodhayanak/ri/ta/m/ vistirna/m/ brahmasutra-v/ri/tti/m/ purva/k/arya/h/ sa/m/kikshipus tanmatanusare/n/a sutrakshara/n/i vyakhyasyante.’  Whether the Bodhayana to whom that v/ri/tti is ascribed is to be identified with the author of the Kalpa-sutra, and other works, cannot at present be decided.  But that an ancient v/ri/tti on the Sutras connected with Bodhayana’s name actually existed, there is not any reason to doubt.  Short quotations from it are met with in a few places of the Sri-bhashya, and, as we have seen above, Sa@nkara’s commentators state that their author’s polemical remarks are directed against the V/ri/ttikara.  In addition to Bodhayana, Ramanuja appeals to quite a series of ancient teachers—­purva/k/aryas—­who carried on the true tradition as to the teaching of the Vedanta and the meaning of the Sutras.  In the Vedarthasa@ngraha—­a work composed by Ramanuja himself—­we meet in one place with the enumeration of the following authorities:  Bodhayana, Ta@nka, Drami/d/a, Guhadeva, Kapardin, Bharu/k/i, and quotations from the writings of some of these are not unfrequent in the Vedarthasa@ngraha, as well as the Sri-bhashya.  The author most frequently quoted is Drami/d/a, who composed the Drami/d/a-bhashya; he is sometimes referred to as the bhashyakara.  Another writer repeatedly quoted as the vakyakara is, I am told, to be identified with the Ta@nka mentioned above.  I refrain from inserting in this place the information concerning the relative age of these writers which may be derived from the oral tradition of the Ramanuja sect.  From another source, however, we receive an intimation that Drami/d/a/k/arya or Dravi/d/a/k/arya preceded Sa@nkara in point of time.  In his tika on Sa@nkara’s bhashya to the Chandogya Upanishad III, 10, 4, Anandagiri remarks that the attempt made by his author to reconcile the cosmological views of the Upanishad with the teaching of Sm/ri/ti on the same point is a reproduction of the analogous attempt made by the Dravi/d/a/k/arya.