Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/66

 ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OF CONTENTS. xlix

the other hand, be said not to have their finality in utility ; because they give rise merely to that kind of knowledge which can be utilised only so long as there are desirable objects to attain. But Vcddntic passages en- able us to know that individual souls acquire unlimited and unsurpassed bliss at the time otmoksha, and enable us also to know that they continue for ever in the enjoy- ment of such bliss. Therefore there is really no end to the utility of the knowledge produced by the Veddnta. To know this invitingly attractive and worthy nature of the highest object of human pursuit is to be impelled to seek it so as to find it ; and herein is the utility of the Veddnta. This utility cannot indeed be well based merely on such an abstract conception of the Brahman as has no reality to correspond to it. If it be shewn that the Ifpanishads do not teach the real existence of the Brahman, then, although they may give rise to the conceptual knowledge of the Brahman, they can have no finality in utility. There- fore the Brahman is really existent, and the chief end of the Veddnta is to teach us to know Him (pp. 325-328.).

The fifth AdJiikarana consists of eight aphorisms, commencing with the fifth and ending with the twelfth. The object of this Adhikarana is to establish that what is declared to be the cause of universal creation, &c., in the Veddnta is not Prakriti or primordial matter with all the potentialities assigned to it by the Sdnkhyas but that it is that omniscient and omnipotent Being who has been denoted by the name of Brahman. The cause of the world is spoken of as Sat in .the CJihdndogya-Upanishad y and the word Sat means Existence. Does this word Existence denote the Pradhdna or Prakriti of the Sdrikhyas, or does it denote the Brahman ? The doubt arises that G