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not have as their dominant intention [to expound Brahman as possessed of figure], but rather to express injunctions related to meditation." |
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The two sets of texts have different intentionsthe nature of Brahman, the practice of meditationand therefore different results. Sankara's appeal is not primarily to the real nature of Brahman, but to the uses to which texts of different kinds are to be put; his argument is an inherently literary one. |
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At the end of the adhikarana, UMS III.2.21, Sankara shows that he is not trying to replace scripture by an encompassing theory, even the venerable Mimamsa strategy of a ritual reading of scripture, by which all of scripture is subordinated to a single final purpose just as all minor ritual actions are subordinated to the major ritual action of which they are parts. Sankara refuses to allow the texts which attribute qualities to Brahman to be reinterpreted as indirect statements about Brahman devoid of qualities, or to be valued merely as accessory to the texts which deny that Brahman has qualities. The two kinds of texts are not to be placed within a single frame of reference. Because they belong to different domains which are defined by different purposes, audiences and results, they are neither contradictory nor cooperative: |
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Accordingly it is wrong to argue, on the grounds that [both kinds of texts] come within the scope of a single injunction, that they combine to impart a single idea [about Brahman] . . . As regards the injunctions about Brahman with qualities and without qualities, no section of the text is available that declares that the competence of the man is identical for both kinds of text . . . It is not logical to accommodate in one and the same substratum such attributes as the sublation of all and the persistence of a part of the phenomenal manifestation. Therefore the division made by us of the [separate] instructions about Brahman with figure and without figure is more reasonable.
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Sankara has of course decided which texts are more important, but he bases his estimation in two modes of textual purposefulness, not in a declaration about "reality in itself." He does not claim that texts about Brahman with qualities do not mean what |
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