this is just what we should like to see proved, and the proof offered in
no case amounts to more than a reference to the system which demands
that the Sûtras should be thus understood. If we accept the
interpretations of the school of /S/a@nkara, it remains altogether
unintelligible why the Sûtrakâra should never hint even at what
/S/a@nkara is anxious again and again to point out at length, viz. that
the greater part of the work contains a kind of exoteric doctrine only,
ever tending to mislead the student who does not keep in view what its
nature is. If other reasons should make it probable that the Sûtrakâra
was anxious to hide the true doctrine of the Upanishads as a sort of
esoteric teaching, we might be more ready to accept /S/a@nkara's mode of
interpretation. But no such reasons are forthcoming; nowhere among the
avowed followers of the /S/a@nkara system is there any tendency to treat
the kernel of their philosophy as something to be jealously guarded and
hidden. On the contrary, they all, from Gau/d/apâda down to the most
modern writer, consider it their most important, nay, only task to
inculcate again and again in the clearest and most unambiguous language
that all appearance of multiplicity is a vain illusion, that the Lord
and the individual souls are in reality one, and that all knowledge but
this one knowledge is without true value.

There remains one more important passage concerning the relation of the
individual soul to the highest Self, a passage which attracted our
attention above, when we were reviewing the evidence for early
divergence of opinion among the teachers of the Vedânta. I mean I, 4,
20-22, which three Sûtras state the views of Â/s/marathya, Au/d/ulomi,
and Kâ/s/akr/ri/tsna as to the reason why, in a certain passage of the
B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka, characteristics of the individual soul are ascribed
to the highest Self. The siddhânta view is enounced in Sûtra 22,
'avasthiter iti Kâ/s/ak/ri/tsna/h/' i.e. Kâ/s/ak/ri/tsna (accounts for