in various places of the sacred Scriptures in more or less differing
dress. Originally, when we may suppose the members of each Vedic school
to have confined themselves to the study of their own sacred texts, the
fact that the texts of other schools contained chapters of similar
contents would hardly appear to call for special note or comment; not
any more than the circumstance that the sacrificial performances
enjoined on the followers of some particular /s/âkhâ were found
described with greater or smaller modifications in the books of other
/s/âkhâs also. But already at a very early period, at any rate long
before the composition of the Vedânta-sûtras in their present form, the
Vedic theologians must have apprehended the truth that, in whatever
regards sacrificial acts, one /s/âkhâ may indeed safely follow its own
texts, disregarding the texts of all other /s/âkhâs; that, however, all
texts which aim at throwing light on the nature of Brahman and the
relation to it of the human soul must somehow or other be combined into
one consistent systematical whole equally valid for the followers of all
Vedic schools. For, as we have had occasion to remark above, while acts
may be performed by different individuals in different ways, cognition
is defined by the nature of the object cognised, and hence can be one
only, unless it ceases to be true cognition. Hence the attempts, on the
one hand, of discarding by skilful interpretation all contradictions met
with in the sacred text, and, on the other hand, of showing what
sections of the different Upanishads have to be viewed as teaching the
same matter, and therefore must be combined in one meditation. The
latter is the special task of the present pâda.

Adhik. I and II (1-4; 5) are concerned with the question whether those
vidyâs, which are met with in identical or similar form in more than one
sacred text, are to be considered as constituting several vidyâs, or one
vidyâ only. /S/a@nkara remarks that the question affects only those