the true doctrine.  But on the modern investigator, who neither can consider himself bound by the authority of a name however great, nor is likely to look to any Indian system of thought for the satisfaction of his speculative wants, it is clearly incumbent not to acquiesce from the outset in the interpretations given of the Vedanta-sutras—­and the Upanishads—­by Sa@nkara and his school, but to submit them, as far as that can be done, to a critical investigation.

This is a task which would have to be undertaken even if Sa@nkara’s views as to the true meaning of the Sutras and Upanishads had never been called into doubt on Indian soil, although in that case it could perhaps hardly be entered upon with much hope of success; but it becomes much more urgent, and at the same time more feasible, when we meet in India itself with systems claiming to be Vedantic and based on interpretations of the Sutras and Upanishads more or less differing from those of Sa@nkara.  The claims of those systems to be in the possession of the right understanding of the fundamental authorities of the Vedanta must at any rate be examined, even if we should finally be compelled to reject them.

It appears that already at a very early period the Vedanta-sutras had come to be looked upon as an authoritative work, not to be neglected by any who wished to affiliate their own doctrines to the Veda.  At present, at any rate, there are very few Hindu sects not interested in showing that their distinctive tenets are countenanced by Badaraya/n/a’s teaching.  Owing to this the commentaries on the Sutras have in the course of time become very numerous, and it is at present impossible to give a full and accurate enumeration even of those actually existing, much less of those referred to and quoted.  Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall, in his Bibliographical Index, mentions fourteen commentaries, copies of which had been inspected by himself.  Some among these (as, for instance, Ramanuja’s Vedanta-sara, No.  XXXV) are indeed not commentaries in the strict sense of the word, but rather systematic expositions of the doctrine supposed to be propounded in the Sutras; but, on the other hand, there are in existence several true commentaries which had not been accessible to Fitz-Edward Hall.  It would hardly be practical—­and certainly not feasible in this place—­to submit all the existing bhashyas to a critical enquiry at once.  All we can do here is to single out one or a few of the more important ones, and to compare their interpretations with those given by Sa@nkara, and with the text of the Sutras themselves.