The bhashya, which in this connexion is the first to press itself upon our attention, is the one composed by the famous Vaish@nava theologian and philosopher Ramanuja, who is supposed to have lived in the twelfth century.  The Ramanuja or, as it is often called, the Sri-bhashya appears to be the oldest commentary extant next to Sa@nkara’s.  It is further to be noted that the sect of the Ramanujas occupies a pre-eminent position among the Vaishnava, sects which themselves, in their totality, may claim to be considered the most important among all Hindu sects.  The intrinsic value of the Sri-bhashya moreover is—­as every student acquainted with it will be ready to acknowledge—­a very high one; it strikes one throughout as a very solid performance due to a writer of extensive learning and great power of argumentation, and in its polemic parts, directed chiefly against the school of Sa@nkara, it not unfrequently deserves to be called brilliant even.  And in addition to all this it shows evident traces of being not the mere outcome of Ramanuja’s individual views, but of resting on an old and weighty tradition.

This latter point is clearly of the greatest importance.  If it could be demonstrated or even rendered probable only that the oldest bhashya which we possess, i.e. the Sa@nkara-bhashya, represents an uninterrupted and uniform tradition bridging over the interval between Badaraya/n/a, the reputed author of the Sutras, and Sa@nkara; and if, on the other hand, it could be shown that the more modern bhashyas are not supported by old tradition, but are nothing more than bold attempts of clever sectarians to force an old work of generally recognised authority into the service of their individual tenets; there would certainly be no reason for us to raise the question whether the later bhashyas can help us in making out the true meaning of the Sutras.  All we should have to do in that case would be to accept Sa@nkara’s interpretations as they stand, or at the utmost to attempt to make out, if at all possible, by a careful comparison of Sa@nkara’s bhashya with the text of the Sutras, whether the former in all cases faithfully represents the purport of the latter.

In the most recent book of note which at all enters into the question as to how far we have to accept Sa@nkara as a guide to the right understanding of the Sutras (Mr. A. Gough’s Philosophy of the Upanishads) the view is maintained (pp. 239 ff.) that Sa@nkara is the generally recognised expositor of true Vedanta doctrine, that that doctrine was handed down by an unbroken series of teachers intervening between him and the Sutrakara, and that there existed from the beginning only one Vedanta doctrine, agreeing in all essential points with the doctrine known to us from Sa@nkara’s writings.  Mr. Gough undertakes to prove this view, firstly, by a comparison of Sa@nkara’s system with the teaching of the Upanishads themselves; and, secondly,