be made to fall in with /S/a@nkara's views
only if a/ms/a is explained, altogether arbitrarily, by 'a/ms/a iva,'
while Ramanuja is able to take the Sutra as it stands.--We also have
already referred to Sutra 50, 'abhasa eva /k/a,' which /S/a@nkara
interprets as setting forth the so-called pratibimbavada according to
which the individual Self is merely a reflection of the highest Self.
But almost every Sutra--and Sutra 50 forms no exception--being so
obscurely expressed, that viewed by itself it admits of various, often
totally opposed, interpretations, the only safe method is to keep in
view, in the case of each ambiguous aphorism, the general drift and
spirit of the whole work, and that, as we have seen hitherto, is by no
means favourable to the pratibimba doctrine. How indeed could Sutra 50,
if setting forth that latter doctrine, be reconciled with Sutra 43,
which says distinctly that the soul is a part of Brahman? For that 43
contains, as /S/a@nkara and his commentators aver, a statement of the
ava/kkh/edavada, can itself be accepted only if we interpret a/ms/a by
a/ms/a iva, and to do so there is really no valid reason whatever. I
confess that Ramanuja's interpretation of the Sutra (which however is
accepted by several other commentators also) does not appear to me
particularly convincing; and the Sutras unfortunately offer us no other
passages on the ground of which we might settle the meaning to be
ascribed to the term abhasa, which may mean 'reflection,' but may mean
hetvabhasa, i.e. fallacious argument, as well. But as things stand, this
one Sutra cannot, at any rate, be appealed to as proving that the
pratibimbavada which, in its turn, presupposes the mayavada, is the
teaching of the Sutras.

To the conclusion that the Sutrakara did not hold the doctrine of the
absolute identity of the highest and the individual soul in the sense of
/S/a@nkara, we are further led by some other indications to be met with
here and there in the Sutras. In the conspectus of contents we have had
occasion to direct attention to the important Sutra II, 1, 22, which
distinctly enunciates that the Lord is adhika, i.e. additional to, or
different from, the individual soul, since Scripture declares the two to
be different. Analogously I, 2, 20 lays stress on the fact that the
/s/arira is not the antaryamin, because the Madhyandinas, as well as the
Ka/n/vas, speak of him in their texts as different (bhedena enam
adhiyate), and in 22 the /s