contains, as /S/a@nkara and his commentators aver, a statement of the
ava/kkh/edavâda, can itself be accepted only if we interpret a/ms/a by
a/ms/a iva, and to do so there is really no valid reason whatever. I
confess that Râmânuja's interpretation of the Sûtra (which however is
accepted by several other commentators also) does not appear to me
particularly convincing; and the Sûtras unfortunately offer us no other
passages on the ground of which we might settle the meaning to be
ascribed to the term âbhâsa, which may mean 'reflection,' but may mean
hetvâbhâsa, i.e. fallacious argument, as well. But as things stand, this
one Sûtra cannot, at any rate, be appealed to as proving that the
pratibimbavâda which, in its turn, presupposes the mâyâvâda, is the
teaching of the Sûtras.

To the conclusion that the Sûtrakâra did not hold the doctrine of the
absolute identity of the highest and the individual soul in the sense of
/S/a@nkara, we are further led by some other indications to be met with
here and there in the Sûtras. In the conspectus of contents we have had
occasion to direct attention to the important Sûtra II, 1, 22, which
distinctly enunciates that the Lord is adhika, i.e. additional to, or
different from, the individual soul, since Scripture declares the two to
be different. Analogously I, 2, 20 lays stress on the fact that the
/s/ârîra is not the antaryâmin, because the Mâdhyandinas, as well as the
Kâ/n/vas, speak of him in their texts as different (bhedena enam
adhîyate), and in 22 the /s/ârîra and the pradhâna are referred to as
the two 'others' (itarau) of whom the text predicates distinctive
attributes separating them from the highest Lord. The word 'itara' (the
other one) appears in several other passages (I, 1, 16; I, 3, 16; II, 1,
21) as a kind of technical term denoting the individual soul in
contradistinction from the Lord. The /S/â@nkaras indeed maintain that
all those passages refer to an unreal distinction due to avidyâ. But