Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/35

 such as avidya for instance ; and the phenomenal know- ledge derived from the scripture is in no way different from the phenomenal knowledge obtained through perception. Nor can it be maintained that the teaching of perception is stultified by the teaching which is given in the scrip- ture, while this latter teaching is not so stultified by the former, and that in consequence the scripture is not false and erroneous ; for, error is error even when it continues un- stultified (pp. 101-105.). There are certain analogies general- ly given to shew that the scripture, which, being based upon avidya or ignorance, is unreal, may form the means for the attainment of the highest reality known as the Brahman ; and these analogies are all one after another pointed out to be not at all suited to the case under consideration, in as much as it is seen that in every one of them a real re- sult is derived from a real cause. When auspicious and inauspicious dreams give rise to good and bad results in life, the dreams are indeed as really existent as the results they give rise to. When magic, medicinal herbs, incantations, &c., give rise to illusions which cause fear, love and other emotions, the illusions are as real as the emotions themselves. Death may result from a suspicion of snake-bite and of poisoning ; here the suspicion is as real as the death. The reflected image of a thing is as real as the thing itself. Dreams are real even in the ab- sence of the reality of the objects corresponding to them, in as much as what is required to make anything the ob- ject and the basis of any cognition is merely the manifes- tation of that thing to consciousness in some manner or other (pp. 105-107.). Even in the case of the apprehen- sion of the sounds of letters by means of the correspond- ing written signs, there is no cognition of the real by means of the unreal. When things are cognised by means