414 Colonel Kennepy on the Védanta System. 
port of the real existence of the rope. So says the Véddnt:* © God is the efficient cause 
of the universe, as well as the material cause thereof (as a spider of its web), as the Ved 
has positively declared, that from a knowledge of God alone, a knowledge of every 
existing thing proceeds.” 
2. From the “ Mundak Upanishad of the Atharva-Véda,” p. 28. 
“That Supreme Being, who is the subject of the superior learning, is beyond the 
apprehension of the senses, and out of the reach of the corporeal organs of action, 
and is without origin, colour, or magnitude, and has neither eye nor ear, nor has he 
hand or foot. He is everlasting, all-pervading, omnipresent, absolutely incorporeal, 
unchangeable, and it is he whom wise men consider as the origin of the universe; in 
the same way as the cobweb is created and absorbed by the spider independently of 
exterior origin, as vegetables proceed from the earth, and hair and nails from animate 
creatures, so the universe is produced by the eternal Supreme Being.” 
COLONEL VANS KENNEDY’S REMARKS ON THE VEDANTA SYSTEM.+ 
As two most opposite accounts of the Védanta system have been published, 
I am induced to think that a farther discussion of this subject will not be 
devoid of all interest. The question, indeed, seems to be one that well 
deserves consideration, since the answer to it, if resting on sufficient 
grounds, is to determine whether the Védcnticas adopt the system of material 
pantheism that prevailed among the Grecian philosophers, or whether they 
have invented a most refined system of spiritual pantheism altogether 
unknown to the philosophers of Europe. Under this impression I have the 
honour of submitting the following remarks to the Royal Asiatic Society, in 
the hope that they may at least tend to assist in forming a correct opinion 
with respect to the real nature of the Véddnta. 
' Thirty-eight years ago Sir Witt1am Jones thus described this system : 
‘“ The fundamental tenet of the Véddnti school, to which in a more modern 
age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, 
not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, 
and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the 
popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of 
* xxiii., 8th, Ist. 
+ The Council of the R. A. S. is not answerable for the correctness of the Sanscrit quotations, 
as it is not in possession of the original works from which they are extracted. The quotations 
are printed verbatim from Colonel Vans Kennepy’s MS. 
