108 
R. Mitra— Psychological Tenets of the Vaishnavas. 
[No. 1, 
spark—something more substantial than a mere shadow—and worked it 
out into a regular system. This is called S'uddhddvaitavdda. It was 
further developed by Yallabha A'charya, whose dogma has since degenerat¬ 
ed into hideous licentiousness. The idea is, that since every individual soul 
is the Supreme Divinity, that soul should not be tortured by penance and 
privation, but fed and nourished and kept in an everlasting round of 
pleasures, and the result is a system of Epicureanism. Ramanuja was 
not satisfied with this shadow or spark. He assumes that the Supreme 
Soul (Vishnu as he names it) devides itself into a twofold form—a Supreme 
Spirit or Paramdtmd, the cause, and a gross one, or effect, the individual 
soul units together with the universe or matter. This idea led him to 
the three categories, soul {chit), non-soul or matter {achit), and the Lord 
(ds'vara) . This tenet is called Visishtddvaita or ‘ qualified unicity.* 
Professor Wilson puts it thus :— 
“ Creation originated in the wish of Vishnu, who was alone, without 
a second, to multiply himself : he said, I will become many; and he was 
individually embodied as visible and etherial light. After that, as a ball 
of clay may be moulded into various forms, so the grosser substance of 
the deity became manifest in the elements, and their combinations : the 
forms into which the divine matter is thus divided, are pervaded by a por¬ 
tion of the same vitality which belongs to the great cause of all, but which 
is distinct from his spiritual or etherial essence (Works, I, pp. 43/’.). 
Nimbarka or Nimbaditya^ who founded the sect of the Sanakadi-sam- 
pradaya, went further, and promulgated the theory of distinct individual 
souls, or subordinate particles, ordinarily inferior but susceptible of fusing 
or subsiding in the Great Soul, so as ultimately to end in one. This is 
called Dvaitddvaitavdda or ‘ the theory of Dualistic Aduality.’ 
Professor Wilson thus summarises the tenets of this school: “ Life, 
they say, is one and eternal, but dependent upon the Supreme and 
indissolubly connected with but not the same with him.” (Works, I., 
p. 144). The Mahopanishad feels the difficulty of this position, and 
evades it by saying “ as the birds and the string, as juices and trees, as 
rivers and oceans, as freshwater and salt, as the thief and his booty, as 
man and objects of sense, so are God and Life distinct, and both are 
ever undefinable.” 
These several ideas of shadow, reflection, scintillation, subordinate 
particles &c., occur in very ancient works, not excepting the Vedas, but 
* This is a nickname whioh was given to the saint because he once stopped the 
motion of the sun on the top of a Nimba tree {Melia azadiracta). His original 
name is not known. Dr. Wilson says it was Bhaskarach^rya, but I suspect this is not 
correct, for there is extant a commentary by Bhaskara A'charya on the Vedanta 
Sutra, which is distinct from the commentary by Nimbh'ka on that work. 
