distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the
adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an
instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the
heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This
becomes very manifest as soon as we compare /S/a@nkara's system with
that of Râmânuja. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we
should say, a personal God, and he therefore lays stress on all those
passages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a
personal God, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those passages, on
the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as
transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal
intelligence, Râmânuja is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has
to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system.
The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent
the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman; Râmânuja
cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation
carried as far as possible. /S/a@nkara, on the other hand, by skilfully
ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to
find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks
of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set
forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the
author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where
the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world
become somewhat crude and gross, Hira/n/yagarbha and Virâj are summoned
forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Virâj Mr. Gough remarks
(p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads
for the purusha of the ancient /ri/shis, the divine being out of whom
the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we
substitute for the 'poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox
Vedânta system--for the Upanishads give no indication whatever that by