Sreegopal Basumallik Fellowship Lectures for 1926. The Vedanta : its Place as a System of Metaphysics

not only in India but in the whole Aryan world, says Professor 1Iax " than the hymns of the Rig- Veda. " If the Rig-Veda is the oldest known record of the Aryan world, the Vedfinta is also the oldest monu- ment of the speculative genius of the Aryan race, and the oldest system of metaphysics extant. [...] " The Upaniads are the cows," says the N. ai:;naviya Tantrasara, " the cowherd's son, Srikrifg)a, is the milkman, P►rtha is the calf, and the nectar-like Git► is the excellent milk. '' The Gita is indeed held by a hoary tradition, as one of the great institutes of the Veda ►ta It is really " the serene forest lake," to use Mr. [...] Sadananda also in his definition of the term Vedanta, in the Vedanta Sara, clearly tells us, " The Vedanta denotes the t'panisads, and such other auxiliary treatises as the 13rahma Sams and the like. " t The expression and the like,' adi,' means, says the commentator, " the Bhagavadgita and other Adhyatma Sa4tras, spiritualistic Scriptures. " These three then, the Upanii3ads, the Gila and the Veda [...] 47 and ►8. ) This is how Satiliara himself summarises his posi- tion in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutras at the end of the first four Siltras :—" The Vedanta leads us to the comprehension of the identity of Brahman and the self, and that, as soon as the knowledge of the non-dual Self and the unreality of the not-self supervenes, all ob- jects and knowing agents or subjects vanish. " With Ramanuj [...] Salvation does not, according to him, imply denial of the world of plurality nor the absorption of the indi- vidual self into the universal and the consequent cessa- tion Of individuality, as it is with 8ankara: it, on the contrary, consists in the individual's conscious union in will with the Infinite Spirit, immanent both in tho world of self and not-self, and in a living participation in the un