the text of Sutra 13, ‘spash/t/o hy ekesham,’ is more appropriately understood, with Ramanuja, as furnishing a reason for the opinion advanced in the preceding Sutra, than—­with Sa@nkara—­as embodying the refutation of a previous statement (in which latter case we should expect not ‘hi’ but ’tu’).  And, in the third place, the ‘eke,’ i.e. ‘some,’ referred to in Sutra 13 would, on Sa@nkara’s interpretation, denote the very same persons to whom the preceding Sutra had referred, viz. the followers of the Ka/n/va-sakha (the two Vedic passages referred to in 12 and 13 being B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 4, 5, and III, 2, 11, according to the Ka/n/va recension); while it is the standing practice of the Sutras to introduce, by means of the designation ‘eke,’ members of Vedic sakhas, teachers, &c. other than those alluded to in the preceding Sutras.  With this practice Ramanuja’s interpretation, on the other hand, fully agrees; for, according to him, the ‘eke’ are the Madhyandinas, whose reading in B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 4, 5, viz. ‘tasmat,’ clearly indicates that the ‘tasya’ in the corresponding passage of the Ka/n/vas denotes the sarira, i.e. the jiva.  I think it is not saying too much that Sa@nkara’s explanation, according to which the ‘eke’ would denote the very same Ka/n/vas to whom the preceding Sutra had referred—­so that the Ka/n/vas would be distinguished from themselves as it were—­is altogether impossible.

The result of this closer consideration of the first set of Sutras, alleged by Sa@nkara to concern the owner of the higher knowledge of Brahman, entitles us to view with some distrust Sa@nkara’s assertion that another set also—­IV, 4, 1-7—­has to be detached from the general topic of the fourth adhyaya, and to be understood as depicting the condition of those who have obtained final absolute release.  And the Sutras themselves do not tend to weaken this preliminary want of confidence.  In the first place their wording also gives no indication whatever of their having to be separated from what precedes as well as what follows.  And, in the second place, the last Sutra of the set (7) obliges Sa@nkara to ascribe to his truly released souls qualities which clearly cannot belong to them; so that he finally is obliged to make the extraordinary statement that those qualities belong to them ‘vyavaharapekshaya,’ while yet the purport of the whole adhikara/n/a is said to be the description of the truly released soul for which no vyavahara exists!  Very truly Sa@nkara’s commentator here remarks, ’atra ke/k/in muhyanti akha/n/da/k/inmatrajanan muktasyajnanabhavat kuta aj/n/anika-dharmayoga/h/,’ and the way in which thereupon he himself attempts to get over the difficulty certainly does not improve matters.