The adhikara/n/a
is, moreover, a specially important one, because the nature of the view
held as to the size of the individual soul goes far to settle the
question what kind of Vedanta is embodied in Badaraya/n/a's work.

But it will be requisite not only to dwell on the interpretations of a
few detached Sutras, but to make the attempt at least of forming some
opinion as to the relation of the Vedanta-sutras as a whole to the chief
distinguishing doctrines of /S/a@nkara as well as Ramanuja. Such an
attempt may possibly lead to very slender positive results; but in the
present state of the enquiry even a merely negative result, viz. the
conclusion that the Sutras do not teach particular doctrines found in
them by certain commentators, will not be without its value.

The first question we wish to consider in some detail is whether the
Sutras in any way favour /S/a@nkara's doctrine that we have to
distinguish a twofold knowledge of Brahman, a higher knowledge which
leads to the immediate absorption, on death, of the individual soul in
Brahman, and a lower knowledge which raises its owner merely to an
exalted form of individual existence. The adhyaya first to be considered
in this connexion is the fourth one. According to /S/a@nkara the three
latter padas of that adhyaya are chiefly engaged in describing the fate
of him who dies in the possession of the lower knowledge, while two
sections (IV, 2, 12-14; IV, 4, 1-7) tell us what happens to him who,
before his death, had risen to the knowledge of the highest Brahman.
According to Ramanuja, on the other hand, the three padas, referring
throughout to one subject only, give an uninterrupted account of the
successive steps by which the soul of him who knows the Lord through the
Upanishads passes, at the time of death, out of the gross body which it
had tenanted, ascends to the world of Brahman, and lives there for ever
without returning into the sa/m/sara.

On an a priori view of the matter it certainly appears somewhat strange
that the concluding section of the Sutras should be almost entirely
taken up with describing the fate of him who has after all acquired an
altogether inferior knowledge only, and has remained shut out from the
true sanctuary of Vedantic knowledge, while the fate of the fully
initiated is disposed of in a few occasional Sutras. It is, I think, not
too much to say that no unbiassed student of the Sutras would--before
having allowed himself to be influence