implying the Mâyâ doctrine). We may admit that both accounts show a
certain fundamental similarity in so far as they derive the manifold
world from one original being; but to go beyond this and to maintain, as
/S/a@nkara does, that the âtman purushavidha of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka
is the so-called Virâg of the latter Vedânta--implying thereby that that
section consciously aims at describing only the activity of one special
form of Î/s/vara, and not simply the whole process of creation--is the
ingenious shift of an orthodox commentator in difficulties, but nothing
more.

How all those more or less conflicting texts came to be preserved and
handed down to posterity, is not difficult to understand. As mentioned
above, each of the great sections of Brahminical priesthood had its own
sacred texts, and again in each of those sections there existed more
ancient texts which it was impossible to discard when deeper and more
advanced speculations began in their turn to be embodied in literary
compositions, which in the course of time likewise came to be looked
upon as sacred. When the creative period had reached its termination,
and the task of collecting and arranging was taken in hand, older and
newer pieces were combined into wholes, and thus there arose collections
of such heterogeneous character as the Chândogya and B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka
Upanishads. On later generations, to which the whole body of texts came
down as revealed truth, there consequently devolved the inevitable task
of establishing systems on which no exception could be taken to any of
the texts; but that the task was, strictly speaking, an impossible one,
i.e. one which it was impossible to accomplish fairly and honestly,
there really is no reason to deny.

For a comprehensive criticism of the methods which the different
commentators employ in systematizing the contents of the Upanishads