The first question we wish to consider in some detail is whether the Sutras in any way favour Sa@nkara’s doctrine that we have to distinguish a twofold knowledge of Brahman, a higher knowledge which leads to the immediate absorption, on death, of the individual soul in Brahman, and a lower knowledge which raises its owner merely to an exalted form of individual existence.  The adhyaya first to be considered in this connexion is the fourth one.  According to Sa@nkara the three latter padas of that adhyaya are chiefly engaged in describing the fate of him who dies in the possession of the lower knowledge, while two sections (IV, 2, 12-14; IV, 4, 1-7) tell us what happens to him who, before his death, had risen to the knowledge of the highest Brahman.  According to Ramanuja, on the other hand, the three padas, referring throughout to one subject only, give an uninterrupted account of the successive steps by which the soul of him who knows the Lord through the Upanishads passes, at the time of death, out of the gross body which it had tenanted, ascends to the world of Brahman, and lives there for ever without returning into the sa/m/sara.

On an a priori view of the matter it certainly appears somewhat strange that the concluding section of the Sutras should be almost entirely taken up with describing the fate of him who has after all acquired an altogether inferior knowledge only, and has remained shut out from the true sanctuary of Vedantic knowledge, while the fate of the fully initiated is disposed of in a few occasional Sutras.  It is, I think, not too much to say that no unbiassed student of the Sutras would—­before having allowed himself to be influenced by Sa@nkara’s interpretations—­imagine for a moment that the solemn words, ’From thence is no return, from thence is no return,’ with which the Sutras conclude, are meant to describe, not the lasting condition of him who has reached final release, the highest aim of man, but merely a stage on the way of that soul which is engaged in the slow progress of gradual release, a stage which is indeed greatly superior to any earthly form of existence, but yet itself belongs to the essentially fictitious sa/m/sara, and as such remains infinitely below the bliss of true mukti.  And this a priori impression—­which, although no doubt significant, could hardly be appealed to as decisive—­is confirmed by a detailed consideration of the two sets of Sutras which Sa@nkara connects with the knowledge of the higher Brahman.  How these Sutras are interpreted by Sa@nkara and Ramanuja has been stated above in the conspectus of contents; the points which render the interpretation given by Ramanuja more probable are as follows.  With regard to IV, 2, 12-14, we have to note, in the first place, the circumstance—­relevant although not decisive in itself—­that Sutra 12 does not contain any indication of a new topic being introduced.  In the second place, it can hardly be doubted that