Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/58

 4 2 The Earlier Upanlads ECHo which are not worked out in a systematic manner. Thus each interpreter in his turn made the texts favourable to his own doctrines prominent and brought them to the forefront, and tried to repress others or explain them away. But comparing the various systems of U pani!?ad interpretation we find that the in- terpretation offered by Sailkara very largely represents the view of the general body of the earlier U paniad doctrines, though there are some which distinctly foreshadow the doctrines of other systems, but in a crude and germinal form. It is thus that Vedanta is generally associated with the interpretation of Sailkara and Sailkara's system of thought is called the Vedanta system, though there are many other systems which put forth their claim as repre- senting the true Vedanta doctrines. Under these circumstances it is necessary that a modern in- terpreter of the U pani!?ads should turn a deaf ear to the absolute claims of these exponents, and look upon the U pani!?ads not as a systematic treatise but as a repository of diverse currents of thought-the melting pot in which all later philosophic ideas were still in a state of fusion, though the monistic doctrine of Sailkara, or rather an approach thereto, may be regarded as the purport of by far the largest majority of the texts. It will be better that a modern interpreter should not agree to the claims of the ancients that all the U paniads represent a connected system, but take the texts independently and separately and determine their meanings, though keeping an attentive eye on the context in which they appear. It is in this way alone that we can detect the germs of the thoughts of other I ndian systems in the U pani!?ads, and thus find in them the earliest records of those tendencies of thoughts. The quest after Brahman: the struggle and the failures. The fundamental idea which runs through the early U pani!?ads is that underlying the exterior world of change there is an un- changeable reality which is identical with that which underlies the essence in man 1. If we look at Greek philosophy in Par- men ides or Plato or at modern philosophy in Kant, we find the same tendency towards glorifying one unspeakable entity as the reality or the essence. I have said above that the U pani!?ads are 1 Br h. IV. 4. 5, 22.