We have above been obliged to leave it an open question what kind of Vedanta is represented by the Vedanta-sutras, although reason was shown for the supposition that in some important points their teaching is more closely related to the system of Ramanuja than to that of Sa@nkara.  If so, the philosophy of Sa@nkara would on the whole stand nearer to the teaching of the Upanishads than the Sutras of Badaraya/n/a.  This would indeed be a somewhat unexpected conclusion—­for, judging a priori, we should be more inclined to assume a direct propagation of the true doctrine of the Upanishads through Badaraya/n/a to Sa@nkara—­but a priori considerations have of course no weight against positive evidence to the contrary.  There are, moreover, other facts in the history of Indian philosophy and theology which help us better to appreciate the possibility of Badaraya/n/a’s Sutras already setting forth a doctrine that lays greater stress on the personal character of the highest being than is in agreement with the prevailing tendency of the Upanishads.  That the pure doctrine of those ancient Brahminical treatises underwent at a rather early period amalgamations with beliefs which most probably had sprung up in altogether different—­priestly or non-priestly—­communities is a well-known circumstance; it suffices for our purposes to refer to the most eminent of the early literary monuments in which an amalgamation of the kind mentioned is observable, viz. the Bhagavadgita.  The doctrine of the Bhagavadgita represents a fusion of the Brahman theory of the Upanishads with the belief in a personal highest being—­K/ri/sh/n/a or Vish/n/u—­which in many respects approximates very closely to the system of the Bhagavatas; the attempts of a certain set of Indian commentators to explain it as setting forth pure Vedanta, i.e. the pure doctrine of the Upanishads, may simply be set aside.  But this same Bhagavadgita is quoted in Badaraya/n/a’s Sutras (at least according to the unanimous explanations of the most eminent scholiasts of different schools) as inferior to Sruti only in authority.  The Sutras, moreover, refer in different places to certain Vedantic portions of the Mahabharata, especially the twelfth book, several of which represent forms of Vedanta distinctly differing from Sa@nkara’s teaching, and closely related to the system of the Bhagavatas.

Facts of this nature—­from entering into the details of which we are prevented by want of space—­tend to mitigate the prima facie strangeness of the assumption that the Vedanta-sutras, which occupy an intermediate position between the Upanishads and Sa@nkara, should yet diverge in their teaching from both.  The Vedanta of Gau/d/apada and Sa@nkara would in that case mark a strictly orthodox reaction against all combinations of non-Vedic elements of belief and doctrine with the teaching of the Upanishads.  But although this form of doctrine has ever since