PREFACE.
This is the first of the three volumes in which it is proposed to bring out an English translation of Ràmânujāchārya's Śrī-Bhāshya, his well-known commentary on the Vedānta-Sūtras of Bādarāyana. The Vedānta of India has now fully established its title to occupy a prominent place among the various systems of philosophy known to the world; and one aspect of it commonly called the Adwaita-Vedānta has long been familiar to European scholars, and has even met with fair recognition at their hands. Rāmānujāchārya's Śrī-Bhāshya is an exposition of the Viśishṭādwaita aspect thereof, and it well deserves to be quite as widely known and appreciated as the Adwaita-Vedānta of Sankaracharya. The Viśîshṭādwaitins represent a school of Vedāntic thought, of which Sankarāchārya himself has taken cognisance in his writings, and there is evidence to shew that it must have come down in the form of an unbroken tradition from very ancient times. The Bhāgavatas and Pāncharātras, who have obviously played a very important part in the history of Hindu religion, are in all probability the original system-makers of this school, which appears to be as old as the Upanishads themselves. The Upanishads and the Bagavadgitā teach both jñāna and bhakti; that is, they teach that both wisdom and worship are capable of forming the means for the attainment of salvation. All along in our history some seekers after truth and salvation may be seen to have relied more upon wisdom than upon worship, while others have relied
