Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/13

 more upon worship than upon wisdom. This division in religious thought is truly representative of two dissimilar innate tendencies in human nature, and the Bhagavatas belong to the latter class. How far the Visisthtādwaita school interprets the Upanishads and the Bagavadgitā aright is thus a question to which each earnest student of the Vedānta has to find his own answer. The discussion of the various Vedāntic problems dealt with in this volume is so full and so well expressive of the fundamental conclusions embodied in the Ṡri-Bhāshya that it gives the volume a characteristic completeness, in spite of its being only a part of the whole work. It is therefore expected that students of Indian philosophy and Hindu religion will find this volume to be interesting and instructive.

For the purposes of this translation we have consulted three editions of the Ṡri-Bhāshya—the Madras edition printed in Telugu characters, the Benares edition in Devanagari characters, and the incomplete Calcutta edition, also in Devanagari characters and published by the Asiatic Society We have found the Madras edition the most accurate among these, and have accordingly followed it in our translation. The style of the Ṡri-Bhāshya is severely argumentative and controversial, and it is also technical and terse. We have, however, tried our best to make the translation smooth and intelligible without any way sacrificing its faithfulness to the original. The additions and alterations needed to make the English rendering full and accurate are all enclosed within curved brackets; and the references to the various quotations and authorities cited in the work are generally given within square brackets, a few of these references being also given in foot-notes. Foot-notes have been sparingly given, and only in places where it was thought they were absolutely necessary for the elucidation