Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/91

 ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OF CONTENTS.

nature, or He may be worshipped as an embodied being ; and in this latter case He may be conceived and meditat- ed upon either as an individual self or as a material object Wherever particular individual selves and particular mate- rial objects are found so described in the scripture as to be in association with the peculiarly characteristic attributes of the Supreme Self, or wherever the words denoting those individual selves and material objects are seen to be gram- matically equated with words denoting the Supreme Self, in all such cases what is intended to be taught is the worship and meditation of the Brahman as forming the Inner Self of all those intelligent and non-intelligent en- tities. Accordingly the words Indra and Prana also de- note the Supreme Self (pp. 432-435.).

Thus ends the commentary on the first part of the first chapter of the Vedanta-Siitras. The first Adhikarana establishes the need for the study of the Veddnta and points out the purpose of such a study. The second gives a definition of the Brahman. The third points out that this definition has altogether to be based on the scripture. The fourth says that the scripture accordingly forms the only source from which a knowledge of the Brahman is to be derived, in as much as the Brahman is the one thing which it throughout aims at teaching. These four Adhikarana^ contain only one aphorism each, and together they denote the need and the main object of Vcddntic studies. The fifth Adhikarana establishes that the Brahman, who has been defined to be the cause of the creation, preserva- tion and destruction of the whole universe, is other than the purely material Pradhdna of the Sdfikhyas. Thus the Veddnta does not believe in what may be called the omni- potence of matter, and there are eight aphorisms given to sh,ew that matter cannot be the creator of the world. Then