It has not, he says, been satisfactorily proved that there is no scriptural authority for the pradhana; for some sakhas contain expressions which seem to convey the idea of the pradhana.  From this it follows that Kapila and other supreme rishis maintain the doctrine of the pradhana being the general cause only because it is based on the Veda.—­As long therefore as it has not been proved that those passages to which the Sa@nkhyas refer have a different meaning (i.e. do not allude to the pradhana), all our previous argumentation as to the omniscient Brahman being the cause of the world must be considered as unsettled.  We therefore now begin a new chapter which aims at proving that those passages actually have a different meaning.

The Sa@nkhyas maintain that that also which is based on inference, i.e. the pradhana, is perceived in the text of some sakhas.  We read, for instance, they say, in the Ka/th/aka (I, 3, 11), ’Beyond the Great there is the Undeveloped, beyond the Undeveloped there is the Person.’  There we recognise, named by the same names and enumerated in the same order, the three entities with which we are acquainted from the Sa@nkhya-sm/ri/ti, viz. the great principle, the Undeveloped (the pradhana), and the soul[228].  That by the Undeveloped is meant the pradhana is to be concluded from the common use of Sm/ri/ti and from the etymological interpretation of which the word admits, the pradhana being called undeveloped because it is devoid of sound and other qualities.  It cannot therefore be asserted that there is no scriptural authority for the pradhana.  And this pradhana vouched for by Scripture we declare to be the cause of the world, on the ground of Scripture, Sm/ri/ti, and ratiocination.

Your reasoning, we reply, is not valid.  The passage from the Ka/th/aka quoted by you intimates by no means the existence of that great principle and that Undeveloped which are known from the Sa@nkhya-sm/ri/ti.  We do not recognise there the pradhana of the Sa@nkhyas, i.e. an independent general cause consisting of three constituting elements; we merely recognise the word ‘Undeveloped,’ which does not denote any particular determined thing, but may—­owing to its etymological meaning, ’that which is not developed, not manifest’—­denote anything subtle and difficult to distinguish.  The Sa@nkhyas indeed give to the word a settled meaning, as they apply it to the pradhana; but then that meaning is valid for their system only, and has no force in the determination of the sense of the Veda.  Nor does mere equality of position prove equality of being, unless the latter be recognised independently.  None but a fool would think a cow to be a horse because he sees it tied in the usual place of a horse.  We, moreover, conclude, on the strength of the general subject-matter, that the passage does not refer to the pradhana the fiction of the Sa@nkhyas, ’on account of there being referred to that which is contained