VI. 8.) PRASNOPANISHAD-BHASHYA 67 there is no distinction of names and forms. It follows from all this that Brahman's causality is not contrary to reason.
- Those, on the other hand, who explain difference re-
ferred to in Sütra 22, as the difference between the jiva in its state of bondage and the jiva in so far as it is free from avidyā 1.6., the unconditioned Brahman, implicate themselves in con. tradiction. For the jiva, in so far as free from avidya, is neither all knowing nor the Lord of all, nor the cause of all, nor the Self of all, nor the ruler of all-it, in fact, possesses none of these characteristics on which the scriptural texts found the difference of the released soul : for according to the view in question all those attributes are the mere figment of Nescience. Nor again can the Sutra under discussion be said to refer to the distinction, from the individual soul, of a Lord fictitiously created by avidyā –a distinctiion analogous to that which a man in the state of avidyā makes between the shell and the silver ; for it is the task of the Vedanta to convey a knowledge of that true Brahman which is introduced as the object of enquiry in the first Sūtra (Now then the enquiry into Brahman") and which is the cause of the origination and so on of the world, and what they at this point are engaged in is to refute the objections raised against the doctrine of that Brahman on the basis of Smrti and Reasoning. The two sūtras Il. i. 8 & 9 really form a complementary statement to what is proved in the present adhikarana ; for the purport is to show also that things of different nature can be to each other in the relation of cause and effect. And the Sūtra II. i. 7 has references to what is contained in the previous adhikarana. Here terminates the adhikarana 'of Desigaation of the Other". 1. Ch. Up. VI. 2. 1. 2. Valşanıyanairghệnye mipekestvat. 8. Na Karruāvibhagaditi cenyanadipad upapadyate cappupalabhyateca. Mine
