The commentary here selected for translation, together with Bâdarâyana’s Sûtras 1 (to which we shall henceforth confine our attention to the exclusion of Gaimini’s Pûrva Mîmâmsâ-sutras), is the one composed by the celebrated theologian Sankara or, as he is commonly called, Sankarâkârya.
But to the European–or, generally, modern–translator of the Vedânta-sûtras with Sankara’s commentary another question will of course suggest itself at once, viz. whether or not Sankara’s explanations faithfully render the intended meaning of the author of the Sûtras. To the Indian Pandit of Sankara’s school this question has become an indifferent one, or, to state the case more accurately, he objects to its being raised, as he looks on Sankara’s authority as standing above doubt and dispute. When pressed to make good his position he will, moreover, most probably not enter into any detailed comparison of Sankara’s comments with the text of Bâdarâyana’s Sûtras, but will rather endeavour to show on speculative grounds that Sankara’s philosophical view is the only true one, whence it of course follows that it accurately represents the meaning of Bâdarâyana, who himself must necessarily be assured to have taught 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 out set in the interpretations given of the Vedânta-sûtras–and the Upanishads–by Sankara 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 Sankara’s views as to the true meaning of the Sûtras 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 Vedântic and based on interpretations of the Sûtras and Upanishads more or less differing from those of Sankara. The claims of those systems to be in the possession of the right understanding of the fundamental authorities of the Vedânta 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 Vedânta-sûtras 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 Bâdarâyana’s teaching. Owing to this the commentaries on the Sûtras 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, Râmânuga’s Vedânta-sâra, 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 Sûtras; 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 bhâshyas 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 Sankara, and with the text of the Sûtras themselves.
The bhâshya, which in this connexion is the first to press itself upon our attention, is the one composed by the famous Vaishnava theologian and philosopher Râmânuga, who is supposed to have lived in the twelfth century. The Râmânuga or, as it is often called, the Srî-bhâshya appears to be
the oldest commentary extant next to Sankara’s. It is further to be noted that the sect of the Râmânugas 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 Srî-bhâshya 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 Sankara, 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 Râmânuga’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 bhâshya which we possess, i. e. the Sankara-bhâshya, represents an uninterrupted and uniform tradition bridging over the interval between Bâdarâyana, the reputed author of the Sûtras, and Sankara; and if, on the other hand, it could be shown that the more modern bhâshyas 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 bhâshyas can help us in making out the true meaning of the Sûtras. All we should have to do in that case would be to accept Sankara’s interpretations as they stand, or at the utmost to attempt to make out, if at all possible, by a careful comparison of Sankara’s bhâshya with the text of the Sûtras, 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 Sankara as a guide to the right understanding of the Sûtras (Mr. A. Gough’s Philosophy of the Upanishads) the view is maintained (pp. 239 ff.) that Sankara is the generally recognised expositor
of true Vedânta doctrine, that that doctrine was handed down by an unbroken series of teachers intervening between him and the Sûtrakâra, and that there existed from the beginning only one Vedânta doctrine, agreeing in all essential points with the doctrine known to us from Sankara’s writings. Mr. Gough undertakes to prove this view, firstly, by a comparison of Sankara’s system with the teaching of the Upanishads themselves; and, secondly, by a comparison of the purport of the Sûtras–as far as that can be made out independently of the commentaries–with the interpretations given of them by Sankara. To both these points we shall revert later on. Meanwhile, I only wish to remark concerning the former point that, even if we could show with certainty that all the Upanishads propound one and the same doctrine, there yet remains the undeniable fact of our being confronted by a considerable number of essentially differing theories, all of which claim to be founded on the Upanishads. And with regard to the latter point I have to say for the present that, as long as we have only Sankara’s bhâshya before us, we are naturally inclined to find in the Sûtras–which, taken by themselves, are for the greater part unintelligible–the meaning which Sankara ascribes to them; while a reference to other bhâshyas may not impossibly change our views at once.–Meanwhile, we will consider the question as to the unbroken uniformity of Vedântic tradition from another point or view, viz. by enquiring whether or not the Sûtras themselves, and the Sankara-bhâshya, furnish any indications of there having existed already at an early time essentially different Vedântic systems or lines of Vedântic speculation.
