d to in the first adhyaya were chosen for the
purpose of throwing light on what Brahman is, and this assumption can
hardly be upheld. The Vedanta-sutras as well as the Purva
Mima/m/sa-sutras are throughout Mima/m/sa i.e. critical discussions of
such scriptural passages as on a prima facie view admit of different
interpretations and therefore necessitate a careful enquiry into their
meaning. Here and there we meet with Sutras which do not directly
involve a discussion of the sense of some particular Vedic passage, but
rather make a mere statement on some important point. But those cases
are rare, and it would be altogether contrary to the general spirit of
the Sutras to assume that a whole adhyaya should be devoted to the task
of showing what Brahman is. The latter point is sufficiently determined
in the first five (or six) adhikara/n/as; but after we once know what
Brahman is we are at once confronted by a number of Upanishad passages
concerning which it is doubtful whether they refer to Brahman or not.
With their discussion all the remaining adhikara/n/as of the first
adhyaya are occupied. That the Vedanta-sutras view it as a particularly
important task to controvert the doctrine of the Sa@nkhyas is patent
(and has also been fully pointed out by Deussen, p. 23). The fifth
adhikara/n/a already declares itself against the doctrine that the world
has sprung from a non-intelligent principle, the pradhana, and the
fourth pada of the first adhyaya returns to an express polemic against
Sa@nkhya interpretations of certain Vedic statements. It is therefore
perhaps not saying too much if we maintain that the entire first adhyaya
is due to the wish, on the part of the Sutrakara, to guard his own
doctrine against Sa@nkhya attacks. Whatever the attitude of the other
so-called orthodox systems may be towards the Veda, the Sa@nkhya system
is the only one whose adherents were anxious--and actually attempted--to
prove that their views are warranted by scriptural passages. The
Sa@nkhya tendency thus would be to show that all those Vedic texts which
the Vedantin claims as teaching the existence of Brahman, the
intelligent and sole cause of the world, refer either to the pradhana or
some product of the pradhana, or else to the purusha in the Sankhya
sense, i.e. the individual soul. It consequently became the task of the
Vedantin to guard the Upanishads against misinterpretations of the kind,
and this he did in the first adhyaya of the Vedan