Mîmâ/m/sâ-sûtras are throughout Mîmâ/m/sâ i.e. critical discussions of
such scriptural passages as on a primâ facie view admit of different
interpretations and therefore necessitate a careful enquiry into their
meaning. Here and there we meet with Sutrâs which do not directly
involve a discussion of the sense of some particular Vedic passage, but
rather make a mere statement on some important point. But those cases
are rare, and it would be altogether contrary to the general spirit of
the Sutrâs to assume that a whole adhyâya should be devoted to the task
of showing what Brahman is. The latter point is sufficiently determined
in the first five (or six) adhikara/n/as; but after we once know what
Brahman is we are at once confronted by a number of Upanishad passages
concerning which it is doubtful whether they refer to Brahman or not.
With their discussion all the remaining adhikara/n/as of the first
adhyâya are occupied. That the Vedânta-sûtras view it as a particularly
important task to controvert the doctrine of the Sâ@nkhyas is patent
(and has also been fully pointed out by Deussen, p. 23). The fifth
adhikara/n/a already declares itself against the doctrine that the world
has sprung from a non-intelligent principle, the pradhâna, and the
fourth pâda of the first adhyâya returns to an express polemic against
Sâ@nkhya interpretations of certain Vedic statements. It is therefore
perhaps not saying too much if we maintain that the entire first adhyâya
is due to the wish, on the part of the Sûtrakâra, to guard his own
doctrine against Sâ@nkhya attacks. Whatever the attitude of the other
so-called orthodox systems may be towards the Veda, the Sâ@nkhya system
is the only one whose adherents were anxious--and actually attempted--to
prove that their views are warranted by scriptural passages. The
Sâ@nkhya tendency thus would be to show that all those Vedic texts which
the Vedântin claims as teaching the existence of Brahman, the
intelligent and sole cause of the world, refer either to the pradhâna or
some product of the pradhâna, or else to the purusha in the Sânkhya