have co-operated to further the development of the theory of the world's
unreality will be referred to later on.[30]

We have above been obliged to leave it an open question what kind of
Vedânta is represented by the Vedânta-sûtras, although reason was shown
for the supposition that in some important points their teaching is more
closely related to the system of Râmânuja than to that of /S/a@nkara. If
so, the philosophy of /S/a@nkara would on the whole stand nearer to the
teaching of the Upanishads than the Sûtras of Bâdarâya/n/a. This would
indeed be a somewhat unexpected conclusion--for, judging a priori, we
should be more inclined to assume a direct propagation of the true
doctrine of the Upanishads through Bâdarâya/n/a to /S/a@nkara--but a
priori considerations have of course no weight against positive evidence
to the contrary. There are, moreover, other facts in the history of
Indian philosophy and theology which help us better to appreciate the
possibility of Bâdarâya/n/a's Sûtras already setting forth a doctrine
that lays greater stress on the personal character of the highest being
than is in agreement with the prevailing tendency of the Upanishads.
That the pure doctrine of those ancient Brahminical treatises underwent
at a rather early period amalgamations with beliefs which most probably
had sprung up in altogether different--priestly or
non-priestly--communities is a well-known circumstance; it suffices for
our purposes to refer to the most eminent of the early literary
monuments in which an amalgamation of the kind mentioned is observable,
viz. the Bhagavadgîtâ. The doctrine of the Bhagavadgîtâ represents a
fusion of the Brahman theory of the Upanishads with the belief in a
personal highest being--K/ri/sh/n/a or Vish/n/u--which in many respects
approximates very closely to the system of the Bhâgavatas; the attempts
of a certain set of Indian commentators to explain it as setting forth
pure Vedânta, i.e. the pure doctrine of the Upanishads, may simply be