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BRAHMANISM
Great Self of the universe (īśvara) who, though not partaking of any suffering, yet holds all together and interferes with the cosmic dynamisin periodically by descending into it-acting thus as a kind of universal unconscious, a cosmic buddhi-mahat,220 which not only witnesses but also participates in the lifeprocess? That is to say, had the Self more the function of buddhi in ancient times; and was its perfect aloofness, its purification, then effected through a systematic comparison with the JainaSārkhya view? The Bhagavad Gitā should be the starting point for another investigation of the carlier, more active, ambiverted concept of the Self, wherein participation is combined miraculously with unconcern.230
The shining Sankara, to whom we owe Advaita Vedānta-at least in the form in which it has stood for the past thousand years, and in which it prevails today as the typical and bestknown philosophy of India—was not only a supreme scholastic thinker but a remarkable religious poet as well. His stanzas praising the Goddess (Sakti Māyā-Devī) 2.11 are among the most celebrated examples of Indian devotional verse. They reveal a surprising aspect of his spirituality; for though he dismisses māyā in his philosophical writings and goes relentlessly beyond to the ineffable transcendency of Brahman, the “One
229 Cf. supra, pp. 319-322.
280 Editor's note: These queries were thrown into Dr. Zimmer's notes together with a brief reference to Ramānuja (whose theory of the actual "transformation" (parinama of Brahman into the reality of the world, though formulated later than Sankara's theory of "illusory manifestation" vivarta), is nevertlicless based, Dr. Zimmer obscrves, on the works of earlier teachers-Tanka, Dramida, Guhadeva, Kapardin, and Bharuciand may represent a pre-Advaita point of view). Dr. Zimmer intended these notations as suggestions for further projects of research, the present section on Vedānta and those to follow on Buddhism and Tantra having been left by him in a very rough, preliminary state.
281 For a study of the Goddess, cf. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, pp. 189-221.
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