Vedanta-Sutras Part I · 88 of 103

Adhyaya II: Pada I: Sutra 37

The beginninglessness of the world recommends itself to reason. For if it had a beginning it would follow that, the world springing into existence without a cause, the released souls also would again enter into the circle of transmigratory existence; and further, as then there would exist no determining cause of the unequal dispensation of pleasure and pain, we should have to acquire in the doctrine of rewards and punishments being allotted, without reference to previous good or bad action. That the Lord is not the cause of the inequality, has already been remarked. Nor can Nescience by itself be the cause, and it is of a uniform nature. On the other hand, Nescience may be the cause of inequality, if it be considered as having regard to merit accruing from action produced by the mental impressions or wrath, hatred, and other afflicting passions 1. Without merit and demerit nobody can enter into existence, and again, without a body merit and demerit cannot be formed; so that—on the doctrine of the world having a beginning-we are led into a logical see-saw. The opposite doctrine, on the other hand, explains all matters in a manner analogous to the case of the seed and sprout, so that no difficulty remains.—Moreover, the fact of the world being without a beginning, is seen in Sruti and Smriti. In the first place, we have the scriptural passage, ‘Let me enter with this living Self (gîva), &c. (Kh. Up. VI, 3, 2). Here the circumstance of the embodied Self (the individual soul) being called, previously to creation, ‘the living Self’—a name applying to it in so far as it is the sustaining principle of the prânas—shows that this phenomenal world is without a beginning.

Insight

Sutra 36’s defense of the world’s beginninglessness is one of the deeper moves in the Sutras. The argument has a striking shape: if the world had a first beginning, then either the released souls would have to come back into samsara (because the conditions that produced beginning would still hold), or souls would suffer without prior karma (which would make the system unjust). Both consequences are unacceptable, so the world has no first beginning; the cycle has always been turning. This is the philosophical foundation of the karma doctrine: beginningless avidya, beginningless samsara. Origen made an analogous (and condemned) move in De Principiis when he speculated about the pre-existence of souls and the eternity of cycles of fall and restoration; the Christian tradition mostly went the other way, but the philosophical pressure that prompted Origen’s speculation is exactly the pressure Shankara is responding to here.

For if it had a beginning, the prânas would not exist before that beginning, and how then could the embodied Self be denoted, with reference to the time of the world’s beginning, by a name which depends on the existence of those prânas. Nor can it be said that it is so designated with a view to its future relation to the prânas; it being a settled principle that a past relation, as being already existing, is of greater force than a mere future relation.—Moreover, we have the mantra, ‘As the creator formerly devised (akalpayat) sun and moon (Ri. Samh. X, 190, 3), which intimates the existence of former Kalpas. Smriti also declares the world to be without a beginning, ‘Neither its form is known here, nor its end, nor its beginning, nor its support’ (Bha. Gî. XV, 3).

And the Purâna also declares that there is no measure of the past and the future Kalpas.

Footnotes 360:1 Râgadveshamohâ râgadayas te ka purusham dukhâdibhih klisyantîti klesâs teshâm karmapravrittyanugunâs tâbhir âkshiptam dharmâdilaksbilakshanam karma tadapekshâvidyâ. Ân. Gi.

37.And because all the qualities (required in the cause of the world) are present (in Brahman).

The teacher has now refuted all the objections, such as difference of character, and the like, which other teachers have brought forward against what he had established as the real sense of the Veda, viz. that the intelligent Brahman is the cause and matter of this world.

Now, before entering on a new chapter, whose chief aim it will be to refute the (positive) opinions held by other teachers, he sums up the foregoing chapter, the purport of which it was to show why his view should be accepted.—Because, if that Brahman is acknowledged as the cause of the world, all attributes required in the cause (of the world) are seen to be present—Brahman being all-knowing, all-powerful, and possessing the great power of Mâyâ,—on that account this our system, founded on the Upanishads, is not open to any objections.