Placing myself at the point of view of a Sa@nkara, I am startled at the outset by the second Sutra of the first adhyaya, which undertakes to give a definition of Brahman.  ’Brahman is that whence the origination and so on (i.e. the sustentation and reabsorption) of this world proceed.’  What, we must ask, is this Sutra meant to define?—­That Brahman, we are inclined to answer, whose cognition the first Sutra declares to constitute the task of the entire Vedanta; that Brahman whose cognition is the only road to final release; that Brahman in fact which Sa@nkara calls the highest.—­But, here we must object to ourselves, the highest Brahman is not properly defined as that from which the world originates.  In later Vedantic writings, whose authors were clearly conscious of the distinction of the higher absolute Brahman and the lower Brahman related to Maya or the world, we meet with definitions of Brahman of an altogether different type.  I need only remind the reader of the current definition of Brahman as sa/k/-kid-ananda, or, to mention one individual instance, refer to the introductory slokas of the Pa/nk/ada/s/i dilating on the sa/m/vid svayam-prabha, the self-luminous principle of thought which in all time, past or future, neither starts into being nor perishes (P.D.  I, 7).  ‘That from which the world proceeds’ can by a Sa@nkara be accepted only as a definition of I/s/vara, of Brahman which by its association with Maya is enabled to project the false appearance of this world, and it certainly is as improbable that the Sutras should open with a definition of that inferior principle, from whose cognition there can accrue no permanent benefit, as, according to a remark made above, it is unlikely that they should conclude with a description of the state of those who know the lower Brahman only, and thus are debarred from obtaining true release.  As soon, on the other hand, as we discard the idea of a twofold Brahman and conceive Brahman as one only, as the all-enfolding being which sometimes emits the world from its own substance and sometimes again retracts it into itself, ever remaining one in all its various manifestations—­a conception which need not by any means be modelled in all its details on the views of the Ramanujas—­the definition of Brahman given in the second Sutra becomes altogether unobjectionable.

We next enquire whether the impression left on the mind by the manner in which Badaraya/n/a defines Brahman, viz. that he does not distinguish between an absolute Brahman and a Brahman associated with Maya, is confirmed or weakened by any other parts of his work.  The Sutras being throughout far from direct in their enunciations, we shall have to look less to particular terms and turns of expression than to general lines of reasoning.  What in this connexion seems specially worthy of being taken into account, is the style of argumentation employed by the Sutrakara against the Sa@nkhya doctrine, which maintains that