An Early Modern Account of the Views of the Miśras

In a doxography of views called the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra, a seventeenth century commentator and Advaitin, Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara, describes the doctrines of a group he calls the Miśras. Nīlakaṇṭha represents the doctrines of the Miśras as in most ways distinct from those of the canonical positions that usually appear in such doxographies, both āstika and nāstika. And indeed, some of the doctrines he describes resemble those of the Abrahamic faiths, concerning the creator, a permanent afterlife in heaven or hell, and the unique births of souls. Other doctriness are difficult to associate with any known South Asian religion, for example the emphasis placed on astrological determinism in the moral economy of the creation. As the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is unpublished to date, a preliminary edition of those portions that concern the Miśras is presented here, together with a translation, notes, and some further discussion. Though the identification is not certain, it seems most likely that the views Nīlakaṇṭha describes in this text belonged to Vanamālī Miśra, a North Indian Mādhva who had lived in the Ganges-Yamuna doab in the mid to late seventeenth century. Even if that identification turns out to be correct, many questions remain.


Introduction
The purpose of the following paper is to present those passages of an unpublished seventeenth century north Indian Sanskrit doxographical text which describe the doctrines of a group whom the author refers to as the Miśras. The passages appear in an enumeration of well-known Indian views that is otherwise relatively routine. In several ways, the author marks the Miśras' doctrines as unusual, that is, as lying outside a wide ambit of Sanskrit-based thought that includes materialists, Buddhists, and Jains. The description of their views in this doxographical text is unusual enough to warrant making them available in a preliminary form, based on three manuscripts, in advance of a thorough edition of the entire text to be published later. 1 Among the doctrines of the Miśras are included some-the permanence of heaven and hell for individual souls whether the world exists or not, the rejection of karma as the governing explanation of life's moral justice, and so on-that might belong to a school of thought strongly influenced by Ā nandatīrtha, or Madhvācārya, the thirteenth century south Indian proponent of Vaiṡṅava realism. The most likely figure appears to be Vanamālidāsa Miśra or Vanamālimiśra, who was active as a theologian and polemicist in the Ganges-Yamuna doab in the mid to late seventeenth century. Some of the more peculiar doctrines attributed to the Miśras cannot however be confirmed in the published writings of Vanamālimiśra, nor in those of Madhva and Jayatīrtha, for that matter.
In what follows I describe the text and its author, briefly sketch the context of Indic doxography in which the text appears, and then present those passages of the text that feature the Miśras, with translation and some annotation. At the end I discuss the possible identity of the Miśras and the nature of their treatment in this text, and collect some of the salient doctrines and their unexpected peculiarities.

The Text and the Author: The Ṣaṭtantrīsāra of Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara
The text is called the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra-the 'Essence of the Sextet of Systems.' The New Catalogus Catalogorum lists six manuscripts of a text with this title, held in Kathmandu, Harvard, Jodhpur, Benares, Pune, and Vrindavan. 2 Two other manuscripts were seen in the nineteenth century, one by Fitzedward Hall in Banaras, and the other by Kielhorn in a private library in Sagar, during his tour of what were then the Central Provinces. 3 The version of the text presented here is based on the manuscript held in the National Archives in Kathmandu, thanks to the efforts of the Nepal-German microfilms project, with some improvements based on the Harvard manuscript and the Jodhpur manuscript. 4 In fact there are two texts called the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra. One is by Nīlakaṅṫha Caturdhara, a seventeenth century Advaitin author. That text is the subject of the current study. But there is another text with this title. It must be roughly contemporary with Nīlakaṅt˙ha's, for it mentions the sixteenth century figure, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī. This Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is the work of another Advaitin and appears to have some relationship with Nīlakaṅṫha's text. That is, one author probably knew the other's work. Which text is older remains to be determined. The manuscript in the Bhandarkar Institute is a copy of this anonymous text. It is incomplete, lacking its ending. Thus it has no colophon; nor is there any other attribution of author, scribe, sponsor, or place. The manuscript held in the Vrindavan Research Institute is also a copy of this text, and is closely related to the manuscript in the Bhandarkar Institute. 5 The four other known manuscripts, as well as the two that were seen in the nineteenth century by Hall and Kielhorn, attribute authorship to Nīlakaṅṫha, and are therefore copies of the work under discussion here.
The text is introduced as the continuation of a longer work not identified by name, which consists in at least four parts. According to that introduction, the burden of the second and third parts of this longer work is to establish that all the purāṇas, all the systematic philosophies (tantra), and all the śruti texts uniformly expound the nonduality of Śiva. The Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is then announced as the fourth part, in which the aim is to show that any differences of view, even those expressed in the Upaniṡads, are alien to all systematic thought. 7 The text attempts to do so by comparing across several metaphysical and soteriological topics the viewpoints it enumerates.
The six systems in Nīlakaṅṫha's list are not the ones we know from the enumeration that eventually became standard. Here there are three schools classified as orthodox or āstika -Mīmāṁ sā, Tarka, Vedānta, and three classified as heterodox or nāstika -Cārvāka, Sugata, that is, Buddhist, and Ā rhata, that is, Jaina. Tarka is then further subdivided into four -Sāṁ khya, Pātañjala, Vaiśeṡika, and Naiyāyika, while the Buddhist view is subdivided into four as well: Sautrāntika, Vaibhāṡika, Yogācāra, and Mādhyamika. Thus there are twelve doctrines or vādas enumerated in the text, while preserving the traditional preference for a set of six. 8 The text's style of presentation is simple and concise throughout, which is not unusual for the doxographic genre.
The interest of this text, and the reason for presenting it here, is that it then adds a supernumerary group, who are called the Miśras. Nīlakaṅṫha refers to them both in the singular and in the plural, (e.g. miśrās tu, miśrais, miśro, miśrasya, and so on).
He also refers to their pupils or followers, (e.g. miśraśiṣyaḥ, tacchiṣyaḥ, miśrānusāriṇaḥ, and so on), and uses the stem form in many other compounds, (e.g. miśramataṃ, miśrādayaḥ and so on). As we shall see, he makes a distinction among the Miśras, with some depicted as holding views not held by others (tadekadeśimatam). Though in the end Nīlakaṅṫha does not accept the Miśras' views, and indeed criticizes them more than he does the views of other non-Advaitin systems of thought, he does offer a more or less serious and sustained engagement with them, filtered through the intellectual idiom of Advaita.
The other, anonymous Ṣaṭtantrīsāra has some structural similarities with Nīlakaṅt˙ha's text. It too is composed in kāvya verses, (Sragdharā in this case,) accompanied by the author's own commentary. It enumerates the same six standpoints, divided three by three (nāstika / āstika), which are then expanded into the same twelve, by subdividing both Tarka and Bauddha in the same way that Nīlakaṅt˙ha did. This Ṣaṭtantrīsāra does not mention the Miśras.
The anonymous Ṣaṭtantrīsāra provides some description of the Pāñcarātras and Pāśupatas, though they are not included in its formal enumeration. It refers specifically to the Bhāṫt˙a Mīmāṁ sakas, if not to the Prābhākaras. Its account of each standpoint is lengthier and more detailed, and includes citations from the canonical works of the respective schools. The two known manuscripts of the text break off toward the end of the commentary on the second verse, unfortunately. Thus we have only a limited picture of the overall scope of this text. Unlike Nīlakaṅt˙ha's text, it makes no programmatic statement about a higher-order conformity of views (aikamatya) at the outset or elsewhere in its extant portion.
Nīlakaṅt˙ha Caturdhara was a Deccanī Brahmin who moved to Banaras and was active as an author there in the middle of the seventeenth century. 9 He wrote about a dozen works that survive, but is most remembered for his Advaitin commentary on the Mahābhārata, the Bhāratabhāvadīpa. As has been noticed earlier, in the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra's opening statement, Nīlakaṅt˙ha refers to a larger work into which the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra fits, which, he says, argues that the purāṅas, the systematic philosophies, and the śrutis are uniform in proclaiming the nondualism of Ś iva. 10 This is a surprising project for Nīlakaṅt˙ha to undertake, given what we know of him. In his extant works, Nīlakaṅt˙ha is not a Ś ivādvaitin as that term is usually understood. 11 In fact, the largest independent work that Nīlakaṅṫha wrote was the Vedāntakataka, whose first two parts are mostly dedicated to a critique of Appayya Dīkṡita's Śāstrasiddhāntaleśasaṃgraha and his Nyāyarakṣāmaṇi, because of the infiltration, as Nīlakaṅt˙ha sees it, of Appayya's Ś ivādvaitin views into his Advaitin works. 12 The third part of the Vedāntakataka consists in a commentary on the Vedastuti chapter of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (10.87), reading it largely as a Vedic nondualist text, not a bhakti one. 13 While the sections of the Vedāntakataka are called paricchedas, the same term that Nīlakaṅt˙ha uses here, and while three paricchedas of the Vedāntakataka are known to survive, they do not obviously amount to a Ś ivādvaitin project of the sort Nīlakaṅt˙ha appears to describe here. Indeed, in his commentary on the Mahābhārata, Nīlakaṅṫha speaks out against the partisan sectarian use of canonical texts both by Ś aivas and by Vaiṡṅavas. 14 Unless other works of Nīlakaṅt˙ha's come to light, and assuming that the reading of the Kathmandu manuscript is confirmed, we might be advised to understand the use of the term 'śivādvaita' here in some other, perhaps etymological or even inverted sense. Nīlakaṅṫha's criticism of Appayya extended beyond his Advaitin and into his Ś aiva works. He wrote two texts, the Śivādvaitanirṇaya and the Ratnatrayaparīkṣā, whose titles echo those of Appayya's works, but which maintain a non-Ś aiva, mainstream Brahminical and Advaitin position. 15 Thus Nīlakaṅṫha could well be redescribing 'śivādvaita' as '(vi)śuddhādvaita,' Nīlakaṅṫha's preferred term for the nondualism of the pure, undifferentiated brahman. 16 9 I have written a number of articles on Nīlakaṅṫha. For the most recent profile see Minkowski, "Nīlakaṅṫha Caturdhara's Advaita Vedānta" 2017. 10 see note 7. 11 On Ś ivādvaita see now Duquette, "Reception" 2017. 12 Minkowski, "Appayya's Vedānta" 2016. 13 Minkowski, "The Vedastuti" (2004). 14 See Nīlakaṅṫha on MBh I.1.23 in the vulgate version (Kiṁ javaḋekara) cited below in note 168. 15 See Minkowski, "Nīlakaṅṫha Caturdhara's Advaita Vedānta" (2017). 16 The Vedāntatātparyanivedana of Govinda, Nīlakaṅṫha's son, is often a guide to understanding the thinking of his father. There Govinda treats the term 'śivasama' as it appears in the Vāyavīyasaṃhitā of the Śivapurāṇa (muktaḣ śivasamo bhavet-Śivapurāṇa 7.1.3.39cd-40, and passim) as a karmadhāraya, meaning both undifferentiated brahman and the totality of creation (adducing passages to show that sarva = sama), or as an instrumental tatpuruṣa, meaning the same as, i.e. nondifferent from, the The Doxographic Context of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra Nīlakaṅt˙ha presents his doxography as intending to establish a conformity of views (aikamatya), not to identify erroneous positions in order to quarrel with them. That brings us to the doxographic context, which I shall touch on only briefly. By 'doxography' is meant here an enumeration of points of view that is intended as comprehensive in some way, that is arranged into a scheme, and that has only such an account as its purpose. The standard work on the subject remains Wilhelm Halbfass' chapter on Sanskrit doxographies in his monograph, India and Europe. 17 Halbfass' interest in doxography is broader than my definition, taking in other varieties of what he calls confrontation and engagement, but in discussing the narrower phenomenon he draws on nine texts, and mentions a tenth, modern 'curiosity' (350)(351). Sketching older patterns of description and survey that serve as his historical backdrop, and warning that these doxographies are not in themselves very impressive intellectual productions (355), Halbfass makes the general claim that such Sanskrit doxographies are nonhistorical and schematic, and present knowledge as essentially complete (349). The points relevant here are that enumerating schools of thought was a preoccupation of Jainas and Advaitins especially (351); that Jaina enumerations tended to be unranked and perspectivist, while Advaitin enumerations tended to be hierarchical and subsuming (351); and that for the Advaitins the emphasis lay on depicting the schools as contextual and mutually constituted, and on arranging them within a larger pattern of harmony in which even the heterodox or nāstika positions occupied a place (355-359).
Halbfass also points out that while both Jaina and Advaitin doxographic traditions enumerated sets of six systems, they were not necessarily the same six. Some of the Advaitin sources did set three nāstika positions off against three āstika ones, and then further subdivided them, but none have done so in quite the way that the two Ṣaṭtantrīsāra texts do. 18 The published text that comes the closest is the sixteenth century Sarvadarśanakaumudī of Mādhava Sarasvatī.
Halbfass consulted Mādhava's work as well as the anonymous Sarvamatasaṃgraha, which Mejor has shown must be later than 1700 AD. 22 This text initially juxtaposes Vedic (vaidika) and nonVedic (avaidika) triads: Mīmāṁ sā, Tarka, and Sāṁ khya vs. Bauddha, Ā rhata, and Lokāyatika. On its scale of validity this text begins with the nonVedic, passing through Cārvāka, Kṡapaṅaka (i.e. Jaina), and Sugata, and further subdividing the Buddhists into four-Mādhyamika, Yogācāra, Sautrāntika and Vaibhāṡika, presented as chronologically arranged from older to younger. For the Vedic schools it begins with Kaṅāda (i.e. Vaiśeṡika), then Gautama (i.e. Nyāya), here mentioning a subgroup (ekadeśin); then it lists Sāṁ khya and Yoga, each in both theist and nontheist forms. Finally come Mīmāṁ sā, both Prābhākara and Bhaṫt˙a, and the brahmavādins, those based on the Upaniṡads, and those based on the Purāṅas. 23 For both of these texts, the delineation of a heterodox trio that expands into six is in accordance with what is found in the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra texts, though the specific order of listing and the names vary; on the orthodox side there is much greater difference. Thus one could say that the two Ṣaṭtantrīsāra texts are following a general pattern of Advaitin doxographies: they are organized in a hierarchy with Advaitin nondualism at the top, in an enumeration that moves from least valid to most, and that points out the error of lesser positions. Advaitin doxographies do allow for minor subdivisions that are off the books, so to speak, and for add-ons, and the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra texts are not unusual in having them. As for their articulation of how three orthodox and three heterodox positions become six and six, this is 21 Sarvadarśanakaumudī 1938, p. 4. 22 Mejor, "Sarvamatasaṁ graha" (2007, p. 260). Potter, Encyclopedia (1983, p. 570), attributes the text to an undated Rāghavānanda, without reference to secondary sources. So does the NCC (vol. 23,p. 218;vol. 38,p. 144). Both refer to the edition published in the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series in 1918. The editor, T. Gaṅapatiśāstrī, however, does not attribute the text to Rāghavānanda, saying instead that the author is unknown (Sarvamatasaṃgraha 1918, Preface). All its known manuscripts are Keralan-Cranganore and Trivandrum-and are written in the Malayalam script. The text appears to follow an earlier work with the same name composed by the sixteenth century Keralan author, Melputtur Nārāyaṅa Bhaṫṫa (Mejor, "Sarvamatasaṁ graha" p. 260, Sarvamatasaṃgraha 1977. Note that the NCC, (vol. 38, p. 144) has conflated the two publications of the Sarvamatasaṃgraha. Unni Madhavan is in fact the editor of the 1977 edition of Nārāyaṅabhaṫṫa's work). There may be a third text with this name, composed by Nārāyaṅa Bhaṫṫa's father, Mātṙdatta (NCC vol. 23,p. 218 ;NCC vol. 38,p. 144). There is a manuscript of a Sarvamatasaṃgraha that is attributed to a Mātṙdatta (Trav. Uni. 1028-G-Alph. Index vol. IV p. 9). This manuscript, though complete, is considerably shorter (200 granthas) than manuscripts of the unattributed text, at least those where a length is given in the description-Trav. Uni. C-2310 (Alph. Index vol. IV p. 9) (650 granthas incomplete), Triv. Cur. V 82 and 83 (both 550 granthas). Thus while the anonymous Sarvamatasaṃgraha was composed too late for Nīlakaṅṫha to see, it emerges from a tradition of works that predates him. 23 There are two overlapping organizational schemes here. The operative distinction is doctrinal, between those for whom the saguṅabrahman is ultimate-Rāmānuja and so on, and those for whom the nirguṅabrahman is ultimate-Ś aṅkara for the Upaniṡadic side, and the Paurāṅikas for the other.
An Early Modern Account of the Views of the Miśras 895 unprecedented, in its specifics, in earlier works, or at least, this articulation is not found in other published doxographies. 24 The other takeaway for what follows is the general conservatism of the genre. In the seventeenth century Advaitin śāstrins are still including Cārvākas and Vaibhāṡikas in their topography of thought, while not necessarily mentioning their contemporary rivals, that is, the spokesmen of the Ś aiva and Vaiṡṅava sampradāyas. The only notable exception is Vidyāraṅya in the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, who does mention Ś aivas and Vaiṡṅavas as contemporary schools of thought. Vidyāraṅya there describes the views of the Mādhvas, as the purṇaprajñadarśana. In doing so he is unique among Advaitin doxographers, so far as I have been able to find. 25 The Structure of the Text Let us now turn to the text. As this paper will present only selected passages of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra, its overall structure is given here for convenient reference.
In the first three verses, the text goes through each of the thirteen systems with respect to three questions. First, what really exists and how, in terms of the subject of experience and the object (jñāna and jñeya)? Nīlakaṅṫha poses the question this way in order to allow for those positions that doubt the reality of the subject or of the object. Second, in liberation, what of all this is there? The question is answered from the point of view of the liberated subject or soul. Third, what explains the world of ordinary existence (vyavahāra) as it is? That is, what gives rise to and continues it, and what makes its operation comprehensible? In the fourth verse, the text turns aside from the collective survey to describe the views of the Miśras. The fifth verse then cites the Upaniṡadic passages that Nīlakaṅt˙ha considers to lie behind those views. In the sixth verse Nīlakaṅtha describes some subgroup of Miśras whose views do not coincide with those of other Miśras (tadekadeśimatam). In the seventh he takes up a critique of Miśra views (dūṣaṇa). In the eighth verse Nīlakaṅt˙ha further distinguishes the Miśras from the other twelve views, which conform in their explanation of liberation, and further criticizes them. In the ninth and tenth verses Nīlakaṅṫha moves to Vedānta, ruling out the validity of Viśiṡṫādvaitin, Dvaitin, and other readings of the Upaniṡads that differ from the Advaitin one. Here the Miśras are not mentioned.
Thus although the Miśras are a supernumerary addition to Nīlakaṅṫha's doxography, more than half of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is taken up with considering their doctrines. The Miśras appear in all of the first eight verses, and dominate the fourth through the eighth.
In the fifth verse and elsewhere in the text, Nīlakaṅṫha cites passages from the Upaniṡads, and even from the Ṛgveda, in order to give the terms of reference for the philosophical systems he is enumerating. It is not that Nīlakaṅtha claims the various positions, even the heterodox ones, explicitly cite or depend on these passages of śruti, but rather that these passages orient Nīlakaṅṫha's explanation of them in their 24 There are dozens more texts whose titles begin with Ṣaḍdarśana-, Ṣaḍdarśanī-, Sarvadarśana-, Sarvamata-, and Sarvasiddhānta- 144,(162)(163)(164). Almost all are unpublished. Meanwhile it is worth noting that there are no other texts listed in the NCC with the title Ṣaṭtantrī-25 Halbfass, "Doxographies" (Halbfass 1988, p. 353). mutual constitution. There is something else implied here: that the Veda itself has presented a doxography of possibile views, which guides Nīlakaṅt˙ha in what he is doing.

Passages of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra About the Miśras
The passages of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra that describe the doctrines of the Miśras are now presented in the order in which they appear in the text, together with translation, annotation, and relevant contextual information. Many of the passages are short. Longer passages, i.e. those that fall under the third, fourth, sixth, and eighth verses, are broken into manageable parts.
The text presented is intended only as an initial draft of an edition. It is based primarily on the manuscript in the National Archives Kathmandu (N), but readings from the Harvard manuscript (H) and the Jodhpur manuscript (J) are used when they solve problems in the primary source. 26 Where the constituted text differs from all manuscripts, that is noted.

Verse 1: On What Really Exists and How
Nīlakaṅt˙ha's introduction to the text sets out his formulation of the twelve systems of thought described above. He then begins with the topic of what exists and how, expressed in terms of the subject and the object (jñāna and jñeya). He asserts that all twelve doctrines fall under four headings: those that believe only in the subject, those that believe only in the object, those that believe in both as essentially distinct, and those that believe in both as intermixed. 27 Nīlakaṅt˙ha lays out this classification in the first verse, where the Miśras are mentioned for the first time. As with most of the verses, this one is very compressed in its exposition. For this and the following verses, I provide a paraphrase which, guided by the commentary, fills in ellipses. Only the last part of the last line of this verse pertains directly to the Miśras. cidaikyaṃ 28 vedāntāḥ suragurukaṇādākṣacaraṇā jaḍaikyaṃ te nānety api kapilayogārhatabhaṭāḥ vimiśre te prāhur makhisugatamiśrā jaḍam asat 26 The Harvard manuscript has a close affiliation to the Kathmandu manuscript. In places they share the same peculiar errors, unfortunately. The Jodhpur manuscript has more superficial errors than the other two, but is more independent of the other two in places. I shall not show all of the minor scribal errors that are found in the manuscripts, especially not in the Harvard manuscripts, only those variants that make a difference to the meaning of the text. Where the constituted text differs from both manuscripts, the variants are recorded. The representation of anusvāras and nasals, of internal sandhi, and of punctuation has been standardized without comment. The edition also regularizes missing or oversupplied anusvāras and visargas, missing -c before ch-, and so on. Only the folio turns for the Kathmandu manuscript are indicated, with chevrons. 27 sarvāṇy etāni jñānajñeyayor dvayor eva padārthayor jñānaikāntatājñeyaikāntatobhayapṛthaktvobhayavaiśiṣṭyabhedāt caturṣv eva mateṣv antarbhavantīty āśayenāha. N f.1v, H f.1v, J f.2r. 28 N f.1v, H f.1v-2r, J f.2v. tadutthā cit kāryaṃ kṣayi na ca sadā yogikalitaṃ || 1 (Ś ikhariṅī) The Upaniṡads maintain the oneness of the subject. The Cārvākas, Vaiśeṡikas and Naiyāyikas maintain the oneness of the object. The stalwart exponents of Sāṁ khya, Yoga and the view of the Jains declare that the two are essentially distinct. The Mīmāṁ sakas, Buddhists, and Miśras hold that they are intermixed. (Some) Buddhists hold that the objective world is not real, (or) that produced things are impermanent. The Mīmāṁ sakas hold that the subject arises from (the insentient objective world). Some Miśras say that the created world is impermanent in part; others that none of it is impermanent, because it is observed at all times by the yogis.
At the end of the commentary to this verse, by far the longest comment on any of the verses, Nīlakaṅṫha comes to the Miśras by way of a citation from the Śvetāsvatara Upaniṣad (1.2).
eteṣāṃ 29 dvādaśānām api matānāṃ mūlaṃ śvetāśvataropaniṣadi dṛśyate. 'kālaḥ svabhāvo niyatir yadṛcchā bhūtāni yoniḥ puruṣasya iti cintyam' iti. 30 Tatra niyatir adṛṣṭam. yadṛcchā tv aniyamaḥ. sarvāṇy apy etāni vyāvahārikāṇi jagatkāraṇānīti vakṣyati. tatra cidaikyavādināṃ cinmā\4v[traṃ jaḍaikyavādināṃ jaḍamātraṃ pṛthaktvamiśratvavādayor api kāryatvena dṛśyatvena vābhipretasyāhamaṃśasya kṣayitvāc cinmātraṃ mokṣe śiṣyate; tad idam uktaṃ, kāryaṃ kṣayīti. matāntaram āha na ceti. kāryaṃ na kṣayi, yataḥ sarvaṃ sarvadā sarvāvasthaṃ tadyogibhir dṛśyate iti miśramataṃ. cakārād aṃśa eva 31 \?[ kṣayi ceti jñeyaṃ. tathā hi, ke cin miśrānusāriṇāṃ 32 muktadehalokādi nityaṃ baddhalokādikaṃ tv anityam iti manyante. 1 The source for these twelve systems of thought is found in the Śvetāsvatara Upaniṣad, 'One should consider the cause (to be) time, inherent nature, destiny, chance, the elements, and the Person' 33 By destiny is meant here the unseen force (adṛṣṭa). Chance means the absence of a regular order. (The author, i.e. Nīlakaṅt˙ha) will later say that all of these are taken (by various schools) to be the causes of the world of ordinary experience and activity. Among these doctrines, for those who maintain there is only subject, only the subject remains in liberation; for those who maintain there is only object, only the object remains; for those who maintain the inherent separateness of the two and for those who maintain the inherent intermixture of the two, because the fragment of 'I', understood either as a created thing or as something available to experience, (because that fragment of 'I') is impermanent, mere 29  subject remains in liberation, and this is said (with) 'the created world is impermanent.' He states another view (with) 'or not'. Because all things are always and in every condition beheld by the yogis, the created world is not subject to decay; this is the view of the Miśras. Since the verse has an 'and' here, we should understand an alternative view among them, that it is subject to decay in part. For some followers among the Miśras think that the bodies and the world of the freed are permanent, while the world and other things of the enslaved are impermanent.
Notes: Several things about the Miśras that are mentioned in this passage reappear later. The use of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad as a doxographic framework will return in the third verse.
The Miśras did not appear in the initial enumeration of views that preceded the verse. The citation of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, and the return at this point in the commentary to a synthetic discussion after treatment of individual systems, is as close as the text comes to an introduction to the Miśras.
The distinctive view about yogic perception that is attributed to the Miśras returns in the fourth verse. Here it appears to be a sort of Berkeleyan validation of the reality of the world because it is always beheld by inerrant minds which, in an echo of the Sarvāstivādin view, can perceive things in their past, present, and future states.
Nīlakaṅt˙ha makes a distinction between those Miśras who believe that both heaven and earth are permanent, and those who believe that only the world and bodies of the freed are permanent. The content of this distinction as well as the fact of it, return in the sixth verse.

Verse 2: On What There is in Liberation
In the second verse Nīlakaṅt˙ha surveys the systems of thought concerning what of the world there is for the subject once freed, from the point of view of that subject. The Miśras come last again, and are excluded from a conformity of view that Nīlakaṅt˙ha finds in the others.
The Sāṁ khya and Yoga schools and the Vedāntins have said that liberation is pure subject. So have the Mīmāṁ sakas, since they don't deny the agent of ritual action. The Jainas say that the freed subject goes upward forever. The Vaiśeṡikas and the Naiyāyikas say that the subject is as it were insentient. Three of the Bauddha schools: Sautrāntika, Vaibhāṡika, and Yogācāra, say that it is a stream of cognition that has no object of cognition. The Mādhyamakas and Cārvākas say it is the absence of self, and that the various conceptions of liberation do not come near this state, from which the sense of 'I' has been removed. The Miśras, meanwhile, say that there is experience of multiplicity in the state of freedom, as there is during ordinary existence.
At the end of the relatively brief commentary on this verse, Nīlakaṅṫha discusses the Miśras.
The Miśras, meanwhile, would have it that there is warrant for asserting that the five-fold difference continues in salvation, just as in ordinary life.
Notes: The five-fold difference for the saved souls returns in verses 4 and 6. The pañcabheda is a core doctrine of the Mādhvas, asserted frequently already by the founder. 36 I do not find an explicit articulation of the five-fold difference (between God and soul, God and creation, soul and creation, among souls, among things in creation) in Vanamālī's writings, though he clearly assumes it, for example in the Śrutisiddhāntaprakāśa. 37 Vanamālī does insist that the liberated are embodied and have fun in the Vaikuṅṫha heaven and elsewhere. 38 He criticizes the liberation doctrine of the Jainas, of the four kinds of Buddhists, and of the proponents of the Sāṁ khya, Yoga, Nyāya and Vaiśeṡika. 39 If indeed Vanamālī is the Miśra that Nīlakaṅt˙ha is referring to, his views on liberation do confirm Nīlakaṅṫha's separation of him from other schools of thought.

Verse 3: On What Explains Ordinary Existence
In the third verse Nīlakaṅt˙ha takes up the question of ordinary worldly existence (vyavahāra), and what explains it according to the various systems of thought. While he has claimed in the previous verse that all of the systems aside from the Miśras are united in their view of freedom, he asserts no such uniformity on this new question. Having stated the unity of opinion among these (systems), (the author) now describes (their) differences when it comes to ordinary existence.
Of the six explanations given in the śruti passage (Śvetāśvatara Up. 1.2) concerning the origin and dissolution of the world, (the Vedāntins declare all six to be the cause. Among these causes,) the Mādhyamika assert only chance.
The Jainas say that chance as well as the elements, inherent nature, and the soul are the cause. The Cārvākas say only the middle two (of these four). Yogācāra says it is only the last, (i.e. cognition.) The Vaibhāṡikas and Sautrāntikas say it is the ones other than the first (i.e. the elements, inherent nature, and cognition.) The Miśras say that God, time, and the elements are the cause. The Mīmāṁ sakas add adṙṡt˙a (to the Miśras's list, understanding puruṡa only as the individual soul). The Naiyāyikas and Vaiśeṡikas (add puruṡa in the form of) the Lord, while the Sāṁ khya says that Spirit, Matter, and inherent nature are the causes.
Notes: The transmission of the text of this verse is disturbed, perhaps because of its compression and the intricate sequencing that makes its meaning opaque. Here we must rely on the commentary even more than elsewhere.
The passage from the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad that was cited in the commentary on the first verse forms the framework of explanation for this section. 46 On Nīlakaṅt˙ha's reading, Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 1.2 lists six factors that explain why ordinary existence comes into being and ceases to be, and why it is the way that it is. Using this passage enables Nīlakaṅt˙ha to frame the metaphysical question so as to show the explanatory deficiency of all non-Vedāntin systems, with the backing of the Veda in saying so. The Vedāntins, he says in the commentary, as followers of the śruti accept all six. 47 Others, seeking a shortcut, limit themselves to a smaller number, not realizing that this contradicts experience. The use of 'api' in the verse indicates an addition has been made to the causes listed for the preceding doctrine. Thus the Jainas' acceptance of the elements, inherent nature, and the soul is to be understood as in addition to accepting chance, which was the only cause accepted by the Mādhyamikas, but now understood as the uncertainty that is entailed by the Jainas' syādvāda. Note also that, in keeping with Nīlakaṅt˙ha's synthesis in the first verse, the term 'puruṡa' is understood variously as the ātman, the jīva, the vijñāna, the parameśvara, and Spirit. Our concern here is with the doctrine of the Miśras, for whom all is explained by time, God, and the elements, with no need to call on fate, chance, or inherent nature.
In the commentary to this verse, Nīlakaṅṫha comes to the Miśras after treating Vedānta, Mādhyamika, Yogācāra, Cārvāka, the other two Buddhist schools, and the Jainas, in that order. The Miśras do not come last here so that they can be grouped with several other schools.
The Miśras prefer to think that the accomplishment of everything in the world is brought about by time, the elements, and the supreme Lord. Although on their view neither fate nor inherent nature can be the cause of the variety of experiences (that souls have), such as their happiness and sadness, nevertheless they boldly maintain that the cause of life's variety is time alone, relying on the authority of the astral science.

Notes:
A second distinctive and peculiar doctrine is attributed to the Miśras here. According to Nīlakaṅt˙ha, the reason they think that time is a cause sufficient to explain why individual experiences in life vary is because of the validity of astrological prediction. That is, astrology correctly predicts changes in the fortunes of a life, based on changes in the patterns of time. Nīlakaṅt˙ha will have more to say on this below under verse 4. I pass over the treatment of the Mīmāṁ sakas, Nyāya-Vaiśeṡika, and Sāṁ khya that follows, (and presumably Yoga, though not mentioned). For the purposes of this study it suffices to review the factors that Nīlakaṅt˙ha allots to them: Mīmāṁ sakaskāla, bhūtāni, puruṡa, (understanding puruṡa as the jīva), and adṙṡt˙a; Nyāya-Vaiśeṡika-kāla, bhūtāni, puruṡa, (both as jīva and as īśvara), and adṙṡṫa; Sāṁ khya-(Yoga?)-puruṡa as spirit, bhūtāni as prakṙti, and svabhāva. eva ye svabhāvaṃ necchanti teṣāṃ bījāntarād 54 aṅkurāntarotpattir 55 durvārā. prakārāntareṇa tadupapādane vyavahāravirodhaḥ. evaṃ miśrasya niyatim anicchato 'kṛtābhyāgamo durvāraḥ. tasmāt kālasvabhāvaniyatiyadṛcchābhūtapuruṣaiḥ ṣaḍbhir api 56 jagajjanmādayo nirvartyanta 57 ity aupaniṣadam eva mataṃ vijayatetarām. 3 Among these views, the four (in the preceding discussion) that begin with the Miśras do not accept that what arises is inexplicable, dependent on chance in the (śruti's) terms. They are confident that it can be explained. But they are refuted just in the source text itself. Those among the four (including the Miśras) who don't wish to accept the inherent nature of things as the cause for the behaviour of those things have a difficulty in avoiding the undesirable entailment that the sprout of one species could arise from the seed of another. And if they were to explain it in another way, that would contradict the common experience of how the world is. In the same way, for the Miśras, who do not accept the idea of Fate, it is hard to avoid the entailment of (punishments or rewards for someone who has) not done (the action that morally occasions those punishments and rewards.) Therefore, the beginning (and end) of the world and (other developments of ordinary existence) are brought about by all six factors: time, inherent nature, destiny, chance, the elements, and the Person. Thus the Upaniṡadic view is triumphant.
Notes: Nīlakaṅt˙ha has grouped the Miśras with the Mīmāṁ sakas, Nyāya and Vaiśeṡika, and Sāṁ khya (and Yoga), because none of these schools accepts chance, and Nīlakaṅṫha can criticize this absence collectively. He singles out the Miśras for not accepting fate, even though in his scheme several other schools do not accept it either.
"ākara" here refers to the source text or to some more compendious treatment of the subject. There is no obvious return to accident and indescribability elsewhere in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. In Nīlakaṅt˙ha's magnum opus, the Vedāntakataka, he does reject several forms of satkāryavāda, concluding that the source of the world is inexplicable māyā. 58 come up as a topic, and because they are unknown to Nīlakaṅṫha's audience. This verse and its commentary are accordingly presented in full here. evaṃ 59 miśrād anyeṣāṃ dvādaśānāṃ vādināṃ mukte\7v[r aikarūpyaṃ vyavahāropapādane prakārabhedaṃ ca vyākhyāya prasaṅgād asmadīyeṣv aprasiddhatvāc ca miśramataṃ saṃkṣipya darśayati, avyaktād iti. avyaktād īśabījāt svamahimavidhṛtāt cijjaḍātmā 60 bhavadrur 61 jajñe puṃsīva yūkā 62 cikuram iha layaṃ naity asau yogigamyaḥ | kālo vaiṣamyahetur bhuji kuṇapayujām atra karmaṇyamuktaḥ svar bhaktaḥ 63 kaṃ tv akarmā kumatir aghahatau yāty anīśas tamo'nte 64 || 4 (Sragdharā) Thus having explained that, apart from the Miśras, the twelve schools of thought are in accord concerning liberation, but have different approaches to accounting for the world of ordinary activity, (the author) now gives a concise description of the doctrine of the Miśras, since it is not known among us and since it is connected with what he has been discussing (prasaṅgāt). The tree of existence, consisting of both matter and spirit, arose from a seed of God that was unmanifest, established separately in His own greatness. Just as a lock of hair with lice (does not return) into the man (from which it sprang) so does this world never dissolve into its source, for it is always perceptible to the yogis (as existent). Time, independent of personal effort, is the cause of the (apparent) unfairness in this world, in the lived experience of those who are conjoined with mortal bodies. The devotee goes to heaven. Those that are innocent, (animals and plants and so on,) reach the world of enjoyment, and so do those (faithful) with confused minds once their sin has been expiated. But the godless go into the Hell called Darkness at the end.
Notes: This mention of the Miśras' being 'unknown among us' is significant in determining who they are. There will be more discussion in the final section. It is also possible that 'aprasiddha' simply means not accepted.
The commentary has something to say about most of the claims made in the verse, and we will reserve discussion until we reach those comments.
The 'seed' of the Lord is the source, the metaphorical counterpart to the tree (dru) of worldly existence. It is glossed in the commentary as the Lord's unlimited and manifold power.
The usage of the term yūkācikura in the verse suggests that it is to be taken as a compound. 59 The full text of vs. 4 and commentary extends over N ff.7r-8v, H ff.8r-9v, J ff.5v-6v. 60  karmaṇya-muktaḥ 'independent of personal effort,' is taken here as a description of time or kāla at the beginning of the line. It could also be construed with the bhaktaḣ in the next line: either segmented as karmaṅy amuktaḣ, not stinting from religious activity, though the use of a locative would be odd, or else as a tatpuruṡa, i.e. 'liberated through diligence.' I take kam as a neuter noun meaning happiness. This would correspond with the enjoyment-worlds mentioned in the commentary.
'From the unmanifest' (in the verse means) from what is devoid of form and so on. From God's manifold and unlimited power, which is like a seed. 'Separated' means established in His own greatness. This tree of continued existence, of both sentient and insentient nature, arose, as a lock of hair with lice (arises) from the body of an individual soul and does not dissolve back into that person. In the same way the (tree of existence) does not dissolve back into its own material cause, because it is perceptible to the yogis. This reason has been explained earlier. And therefore, because there is never a cessation of the delimiting characteristics of God and the individual soul, just as there is no cessation of what distinguishes human and louse, there is not even the possibility of imagining that the two are not different in the way that there is for the space enclosed by a pot and the space by a hermitage.
Note: I have made the conjecture that īśadvijavad should be read as īśabījavad, which is plausible orthographically, and which makes more sense, given the wording of the verse.
The commentary on the louse-lock fills out the sense of this analogy. It appears to be based on an aetiology of head lice as spontaneously emerging not from other lice, but from the person, in the hair as it grows. 68 puṁ si is probably intended here both as the Puruṡa and as the lice-infested person. The point is that the louse is a living thing that emerges from the man, but that is separate from him and never returns into him. This is probably not the Miśras' analogy but Nīlakaṅṫha's unflattering one.
That the world is permanently real because it is perceptible to yogis in all times was already discussed in the first verse.  68 The Ā yurvedic text, the Carakasaṃhitā (3.7.10) attributes the cause of headlice to the host's lack of cleanliness. My thanks to Dominik Wujastyk for this reference. 69 Narain, Outline (1962, p. 49). Vanamālī accepts this view in ŚSP 7-10, pp. 71-79. Furthermore, its criterion for determining whether something is real is that it has been perceived correctly and without later sublation, at some time and place. 70 What is more, memory is accepted as a pramāṅa, underpinned by the belief that yogic perception is unmediated, flawless knowledge of past, present, and future. 71 Madhva asserts in the Pramāṇalakṣaṇa that yogic perception takes in all things completely other than God, and is beginningless and eternal. 72 If the Miśras are indeed Mādhvas, Nīlakaṅṫha has imputed to them what appears to be an entailment of their views, that the world once created does not end, because yogic knowledge of the world does not end.
There could be an objection to the Miśras' view that since there are no previous births, (i.e. since there is no karmic continuity between lives), there would be the (undesirable entailment) of someone undergoing (the results of deeds) that he hasn't done. (Describing how the Miśras address this objection,) he says (in the verse,) 'Time.' When according to the authority of the astrological sciences-genethlialogy, Persianate prorogation-and so on, the right moment, being aspected by auspicious and inauspicious planets at the onset of the day, month, and year of conception and birth, is the cause of the variety of life experiences, it is pointless to imagine that a previous birth is the cause of that (variety).

Notes:
The evaṁ suggests that because the soul and God are ever distinct, on the Miśras' view, therefore there is no moral continuity of action. But there are dualists who accept the existence of saṁ sāric karma; certainly Madhva did. Nīlakaṅṫha appears here to be extending the point made in the third verse, that the Miśras do not accept destiny or chance as a sufficient explanation of the justice of life. In the third verse Nīlakaṅt˙ha brought out the importance of svabhāva, inherent nature, for the Miśras. Madhva accorded a special importance to the inherent nature of individual souls. There is a threefold distinction among them: some will be reborn eternally; some will attain liberation; and some will be eternally damned. On this view, karma as an explanation is subordinate to the predestiny implicit in a soul's inherent nature. 76 70 Sharma, Philosophy (1986, p. 51). 71 Sharma, Philosophy (1986, p. 143). 72 Mesquita, Viṣṇutattvanirṇaya (2000, pp. 240-245 76 Sharma, Philosophy (1986, pp. 281-288). Cf. Vanamālī's VSS 1.22.
Tājika is a hybrid form of astrological horoscopy in Sanskrit that uses explicitly Arabo-Persianate forms of prorogation and so on. 77 According to the passage here, time explains the apparent unfairness of our lives, not fate or chance or karma. Astrology offers the warrant for the truth of this claim. This is a view and a reason that came up in the third verse. I find no appeal to jyotiḣśāstra, the astral sciences, as a way to explain the variety of experience anywhere in the writings of Vanamālī Miśra or of Madhva or Jayatīrtha. If the Miśras were indeed to be identified as Mādhvas, this attribution would remain unexplained.
That being so, there is no point in striving to find happiness in this world, or to avoid misery, because both are unavoidably brought on by time, whether auspicious or inauspicious. Instead one should seek happiness in the next world, and avoid misery there, by following the course laid down in the scriptures. For the commands of the Lord, which prescribe and forbid behaviours, are not to be transgressed.

Notes:
The first sentence of this section is the justification for the description of time in the verse as 'karmaṅyamuktaḣ,' independent of personal effort. 80 ata 81 eveśasyaikāntabhaktāḥ svaḥśabditaṃ niratiśayanirduḥkhasukhabhogayogyā apunarāvṛttisthānaṃ yānti. ye tv akarmāṇaḥ paśvādayo drumādayaś ca, te 'pi iha luptaśarīrā īśājñākāribhiḥ svargād adhastanīḥ ṣaḍ bhogabhūmīḥ praveśyante tatratyajanasyopabhogārthaṃ.
Thereby are those who are devoted solely to God fit to enjoy a happiness unsurpassed and without sorrow. They go to a place called 'heaven' from which they do not return. Meanwhile the innocent, that is, animals and trees and the like, who are not moral agents (akarmāṅaḣ), when they lose their (physical) bodies in the world the servants of God make them enter one of the six worlds of enjoyment that lie below heaven, where they serve for the experiences of the people there. Notes: Vanamālī certainly endorses bhakti as the path to a permanent heaven in which there is pleasure (sukha) but no pain, and no return to earth. 82 īśājñākāribhiḥ-Those who carry out the commands of God. These would be all of the other deities in Madhva's hierarchy of the sacred. What is worthy of note is that it is not the impersonal workings of karma but agents of God's will who bring about rewards and punishments.
The six worlds of enjoyment. bhogabhūmi usually refers in the Purāṅic cosmology to the other continents on earth aside from Jambūdvīpa, and to the other parts of the Jambūdvīpa aside from Bhārata, which is the karmabhūmi. They are places where one experiences the results of actions done in Bhārata, the karmabhūmi. The Jainas make a similar horizontal geographical distinction between karmabhūmi and bhogabhūmi, in the regions of their huge earth. 83 Here the six enjoyment-worlds are described as below heaven. The use of bhūmi here suggests that they are arranged in levels. They appear to be between heaven and earth, therefore. They are specifically for those who have finished life on earth. The plants and animals are endowed with bodies made of some less concrete stuff. Vanamālī makes no mention of sentient creatures innocent of karma. For him, even plants are reincarnated beings. 84 The people located there are discussed in the next passage.
As for those who are godly but yet sinners, when they die they end up at the gates of hell, where they are thoroughly roasted by hell's heat and thereby undergo a punishment, whether mild, intense, or very intense, that is in keeping with their sin. At the end of the Age of the World, when they are free from sin, they regain their old bodies at the command of God, and enter the worlds of enjoyment below heaven. There they enjoy happiness in keeping with their (good) deeds (on earth.) Notes: The Indian cosmological term 'kalpa' that is used here might be misleading. There is no suggestion in the doctrines of the Miśras that there is a cycle of creation that begins again. Thus I have translated as the End of the Age. As has been mentioned in the first verse, some Miśras think the mundane world never ends; others that it does. All apparently think that the heavenly world never does. For Madhva and for 82 VSS 2.72-82; 6.59-60. 83 Kirfel, Kosmographie (1920, pp. 25, 58, 112, 314 Vanamālī, the body and world of God is permanent. 86 Vanamālī describes hells that consist in burning heat, e.g. a sandy land in the hot sun. 87 I find no mention of a gateway, however. The worlds of enjoyment might find a counterpart in the lower heavens through which those gradually liberated, the kramamuktas, pass. 88 ye tv aham eveśvaro na matto 'nya īśvaro 'stīti manyante, te narakadvāri sūkṣmadehena yātanām labdhvā punaḥ kalpānte sthūladehair yojitā akṣayye narake tamaḥsaṃjñe yānty ante. Those on the other hand who think that there is no God but I, they (too) undergo punishment in their spiritual body at the gates of hell until the end of the Age of the World, when, reunited with their physical bodies, they are sent to the unending hell called Darkness.

Notes:
The godless, like the godly but sinning, are reunited with a physical body after they have completed their punishment. In these bodies they remain forever in a hell called Tamas. In some Jaina cosmologies there is a next lowest hell called Tamas, and a lowest hell called Tamastamas. 89 The Mādhvas also have a lowest hell called Tamas. 90 tataḥ svarganarakayor dvāravipidhāne saṃvṛte \8v[ na ko'pi svargād adhaḥ patati nāpy evaṃ 91 narakād bahir niḥsaratīti kalpaḥ samāpyate. tasmān nityasukhārthī kalyāṇam evācared iti siddham. 4.
When the Age of the World comes to an end, the doors of the gates of heaven and hell are closed. Then no one can fall from heaven, nor similarly can they escape from hell. Therefore, one who wishes for eternal happiness should behave correctly.
Notes: As mentioned above, the followers of Madhva do maintain a permanent heaven and hell for God and certain predestined souls. I find no reference in Vanamālī to gates that are shut at the end of the age, however.

Verse 5: The Basis in śruti for the Miśras' Views
In the next verse, Nīlakaṅṫha provides what he sees as the Vedic scriptural basis for the views of the Miśras. He singles out the Chāndogya Upaniṣad for attention here. In his commentary on the fifth verse he cites from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad five 87 VSS 1.55-58. 88 VSS 2.52-56. 89 Kirfel, Kosmographie (1920, pp. 315-325). 90 On the permanence of hell for the lowest in nature, see Sarma, Introduction (2003, pp. 57-58). Vanamālī predicts hell for the nondualists, who think that they are brahman VSS 6. 137-38. 91 N, H, J etaṁ . times, and once from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Taittirīya, Muṇḍaka, and Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣads, as well as from the Vāyupurāṇa. 92 As has been mentioned above, it is not that Nīlakaṅṫha thinks the Miśras explicitly refer to these passages, but that these passages represent in Vedāntic terms the grounding for the positions that the Miśras hold, and enable Nīlakaṅṫha to form a view of their position and to offer a criticism.
This verse and commentary present no additional doctrines that are attributed to the Miśras, who are explicitly discussed only at the end. Only a summary of the argument of this section is presented here, in order to establish the context for that closing part.
The premise of the verse is based on a passage from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, to the effect that the Self is to be magnified (mahayya) and attended to (paricarya). The one who does so gains both this world and the next. 93 Therefore the one who wishes to gain both worlds should magnify and attend to the Self. This means worshipping (pūjana) and contemplating (upāsanā) the Self. Nīlakaṅt˙ha's dummy-Miśra understands both of these passages as Vedic injunctions (vidhi).
The Self in question is established by the context. It is the person seen reflected in the eye, 94 in a mirror, and in water. 95 Another passage of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad fortifies this conclusion. 96 Passages from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad confirm that the reflection (pratibimba) is what should be contemplated. 97 The worship of this Self-as-reflection is accomplished just by worshipping its prototype with garlands, sandalwood powder, and so on. But its contemplation involves intellectual inquiry and making the reflection the content of awareness in a continuous stream. When this has been done diligently for a long time without interruption, the aspirant conquers his mind, which means that he can fulfill all of his desires. He conquers the elements as well, and gets the body of a perfected being.
There are two śruti passages to this effect, in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, and in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. 98 A passage from the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, too, supports the idea that the contemplation of the food-based body results in the fulfillment of all desires. 99 92 The passages appear in the notes below. 93 ātmaiveha mahayya ātmā paricaryya ātmānam eveha mahayyann ātmānaṃ paricarann ubhau lokāv āpnotīmaṃ cāmuṃ ca. Chāndogya Up. 8 Nīlakaṅt˙ha then cites three lines from the Vāyupurāṇa to the effect that those who contemplate as their Self the physical body, senses, intellect, or ego can remain in heaven for only fixed amounts of time. 100 Thus Nīlakaṅt˙ha's Vedic basis for the Miśras' views lies in Upaniṡadic passages that promote the worship of the material body as the Self. These passages are not read by nondualist readers as ultimate instructions, but only as preliminary views that are superseded by other statements. That brings us to the excerpt of this section that explicitly refers to the Miśras. It begins with a return to the Chāndogya Upaniṣad's eighth chapter, and Prajāpati's instruction of Indra and Virocana.
Although in this passage Prajāpati did not intend to recommend the contemplation of the Self-as-reflection, nevertheless Indra and Virocana, who had lived as students for thirty-two years practising the life of the brahmacārin, erroneously understood Prajāpati's teaching as signifying that they should contemplate that reflection. Having in mind these two, who had left student life as worshippers of an image of the body, and who were therefore unworthy to enter into the world of those who will eventually be liberated (kramamuktisthāna), Prajāpati said, 'whichever of these two, whether god or asura, will take this teaching (of reflection-worship) as their Footnote 100 continued Miśra's Tattvavaiśāradī, on Yogasūtra 1.19, where Vācaspati attributes the verses to the Vāyupurāṇa. Vācaspati cites these verses in the Tattvakaumudī on Sāṃkhyakārikā 44 as well. The verses are not preserved in extant versions of this Purāṅa. See Ś rīnivāsan, Tattvakaumudī 1967, p. 205. 101 N f.9v, H ff.10r-11v, J f.7v. instruction will be defeated.' Indra realized his own misunderstanding halfway down the road home, and so returned to Prajāpati. But Virocana, because he did not realize (his mistake), did not turn back, and proclaimed this teaching to his own (i.e. the asuras). Now the Miśras, depending on just this teaching of the permanence of the world and the bodies of liberated souls which is established here (i.e. in the passage of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad), have said in their own doctrinal system that all created things are permanent. And based on this they have said that the Lord is to be worshipped as distinct and separate (from the Self)(tat˙astha). And they have also fancifully made up whatever other thing suits their own view.
Let that be what it is.
Notes: Nīlakaṅt˙ha groups the views of the Miśras with Virocana's understanding of Indra's teaching. The point is probably not that the Miśras are to be classified as Asuras, but that they are making the same mistake as the Asuras are. The larger point is that their views can be meaningfully classified according to an Upaniṡadic scheme in which they do not come out well. It does not necessarily follow, however, that belief in the permanence of the world and body of the liberated entails belief in the body as the Self. Vanamālī believes in the former (see above), but not in the latter. 112 While Vanamālī cites and explains many śruti passages in his published works, I do not find any discussion by him of the ten Upaniṡadic passages that Nīlakaṅṫha has mentioned in the commentary on this verse.

Verse 6: Alternative Views Among the Miśras
In the sixth verse, Nīlakaṅṫha describes the views of some among the Miśras who do not accept all of the doctrines listed in the fourth verse. As we shall see, there appear to be three groups in all that fall under the rubric of 'Miśras.' The divergences of two of these three from the main group are described here. Notes: It appears the first two lines are to be taken as representing a view that explicitly differs with the general group of Miśras on a point of metaphysics. The last two lines are apparently to be taken as the view of a second group, who have their own theology of God's manifestation to mortals.
nityatāvat-I take the -vat as the possessive suffix, lit. 'possessed of eternality.' prāgjanur janiman, the 'birth before birth' is glossed as atītajanman-in the commentary. janus is an old word which appears only in the Ṛgveda and Atharvaveda. Nīlakaṅṫha knows the Ṛgveda well. 118 janiman must be the rare jani plus the possessive -mant suffix. The words seem to refer to creation more generally rather than to individual birth, given the passage from the Yogaśāstra that is cited below.
That there are some Miśras who believe the heavenly world is eternal but the world of ordinary unsaved existence is not was mentioned in the first verse. This would appear to be the view of Madhva. 119 The warrant of yogic experience appeared in both the first and the fourth verses.
Given the manuscript variants, it may be that amṙtamṙtaṁ should be read as anṙtam ṙtaṁ . This would cause trouble for the text of the commentary that follows, however.
In the manuscripts, dhvāntavātātmajākhyāḥ could also be read dhvāntavātāṃtyajākhyāḥ. The name of a group is given here, or given the commentary, perhaps the names of two or even three groups. It is worth recalling here, however, that Madhva described himself as the third incarnation of the Wind deity, and was so described by his followers. Vanamālī honours him as such in the maṅgala to some of his works. 120 yad uktaṃ miśraiḥ, sarvaṃ kāryaṃ yogipratyakṣato nityaṃ iti, tan na, "daśasu mahākalpeṣu parivarttamānena maye"ty ādinā yogaśāstre 121 118 He was probably an Ā śvalāyanī. Minkowski, "Mantrakāśīkhaṅḋa," (2002). 119 Sharma, Philosophy (1986, pp. 222-232 That which the Miśras say, that all produced things are eternal because of the perception of the yogis, is not so, because all that is proved by yogic perception is that those lifetimes existed in the past as did other produced things. For consider the dialogue between Jaigīṡavya and Ā vat˙ya recounted in the Yogaśāstra, which begins with him saying that he passed through ten ages of the world. Therefore produced things made of the gross physical elements are mortal, viz. impermanent; produced things made of the subtle elements are immortal, viz. permanent. Thus the bodies and world of the liberated, and all that attends them, which are produced from the subtle elements, are permanent; the bodies and world of souls before their salvation, and all that attends them, are produced from the gross physical elements and impermanent. Notes: The first sectarian group is presented here. They differ from the general view, introduced in the first verse and described in the fourth, that all of the creation is eternal, i.e. real in past, present, and future, because of the warrant provided by yogic experience. This group also appears to accept the deliverances of yogic experience, but restricts the nature of the permanence they validate. The reference to the Pātañjalayogaśāstra is to a passage in the commentary on 3.18, the sūtra about gaining knowledge of previous births. Here a story is told in order to explain why this knowledge would be desirable. In answering a question from Ā vaṫya, Jaigīṡavya, an accomplished yogin, recounts that he has lived through ten ages of the world with the stuff of his intellect unobstructed by impediment because of its purity, observing the misery that arises in the hellish worlds and among animals, and taking birth again and again among gods and humans. From this he has learned that all experiences of embodied existence are miserable by comparison with the final singularity that yogins achieve. 127 The point appears to be that yogic knowledge proves only that past births have taken place, not that they are permanent or presently real. For Mādhvas, their once having been real means that they continue to be real in a specific sense. (See above under the fourth verse).
There is an explicit statement here that the bodies of the liberated are made of subtle, not crude physical elements. This is either a clarification to or a distinction from the metaphysics of the main body of Miśras that was described in the fourth 125 H anṙtaṁ . N, J amṙtaṁ . 126 N, H nitvaṁ . J nityam. 127 daśasu mahāsargeṣu bhavyatvād anabhibhūtabuddhisattvena mayā narakatiryagbhavaṃ duḥkhaṃ saṃpaśyatā devamanuṣyeṣu punaḥ punar utpadyamānena yat kiṃcid anubhūtaṃ tat sarvaṃ duḥkham eva pratyavaimi.
verse, where we are told that those in unending hell and those in the enjoymentworlds are rejoined with their previous bodies.
And (another group holds that) since it is not possible to bring the invisible form of God into the mind (of a mortal human,) there is a visible form of God as well. And (they think that) there is no logical problem in (this visible form's) being a produced (and hence impermanent) thing because it is distinct (from other forms,) since they accept that even the visible bodies and worlds of this (God) are beginningless.
Notes: This appears to be a point of view distinct from the preceding, based on what immediately follows. That humans have only a limited capacity to conceive of brahman is stated frequently in Madhva's writings. 128 Madhva also maintains that the soul is a reflection (pratibimba) of God, in the sense of being dependent on God for existence and reality; and that souls vary in the form (mūrti) of the deity that they reflect in their hearts. 129 tad evaṃ 130 miśrādimatatraye jīveśayor bhedaḥ. īśopāstisādhyā jīvasya muktatā, upāstiś ca dāsabhāvena 131 ahaṃgrahavādinām andhatamaḥ\10v[praveśasmaraṇāṭ. upāstyaṅgaṃ jñānaṃ na svapradhānaṃ. īśvaralokaprāptir muktiḥ pañcavidhabhedabhānavatī, na tv ātmapradhvaṃsarūpā jaḍāvastheti samānam eva. prāptyālambanāni 132 taṭasthāny api ādyasyāvyakteśvararūpaṃ madhyamasya dehapratibimbarūpam antyasya mūrtimadīśvararūpam iti bhedaḥ. sarve 'pi śrautam aśarīratālakṣaṇaṃ pūrvoktadvādaśavādisampratipannaṃ mokṣaṃ bādhante, mokṣe saśarīratāṃ cābhiniveśapūrvakaṃ samarthayante. 6 In summary, here is what is held in common among the triad of views, those of the Miśras and of the other (two): There is an ontological difference between God and the individual soul. The salvation of the individual soul is brought about by the worship of God, and that worship is enacted with the feeling of being a servant of God, because it is recorded in scripture that those who are egotistical in their religious belief enter into blinding darkness. Knowledge is an appendage to worship, not a primary means (of being saved) in its own right. This liberation is one in which all the appearances (of the creation) with its five elements are maintained. It is not a state of insentience, where the individual sense of 'I' disappears. Where they differ is over the supports for reaching salvation, (i.e. over the forms for contemplating the deity), though these supports are not essential (tat˙astha). These are, for the first group, an invisible form of god, for the middle group, a form that is a reflection of the body, (or a reflection in the body), and for the last group, a form of God that is incarnate. All (three) reject the idea of liberation that is agreed by the twelve philosophical schools described above, where liberation is characterized by not being embodied, (a view that) is sanctioned by passages from the Veda. Instead (all three) argue for embodiedness in salvation with great insistence.
Notes: This is the most intriguing of the verses-with-commentary in the text. It provokes many questions, especially this last passage. There is mention of a triad of views and of partisan subgroups, and there is a summary of what the three have in common in both doctrines and practice. All of it is maddeningly concise, given that the views were said earlier to be 'unknown to us.' The term 'Miśras' appears in two senses, one more inclusive and one less so. Initially all of these views were characterized as those of the Miśras. Here one group has differed from the Miśras, so called, over what is proved by the fact of yogic perception. Another has disagreed over whether God has a physical form. Since all three are distinguished from the twelve systems described earlier, we must take all of them as Miśras in the inclusive sense.
How many names are there in the final compound in the verse, dhvāntavātātmajākhyāḣ, which could also be read dhvāntavātāntyajākhyāḣ? (antyasya in the last portion of the commentary might support that reading.) Could there be three? Should we then take the three varieties of Miśras to match up with these three 'names'? Those born of the night, the wind, and the Self or last, respectively? It is tempting to see in the three forms for worship an attempt at describing the Christian trinity, the invisible Father, the Holy Spirit reflected or present in the body, and called the wind (vāta), and the incarnate Son. On the other hand, it has been noted already that Madhva is known among his followers as an incarnation of the Wind god, hence Vātātmaja. I cannot explain dhvānta, darkness or night, in either case.
The form of God for the middle group is said to be a reflection of the body (dehapratibimba). A number questions arise: whose body, to begin with? Madhva maintains that the soul is a non-illusory reflection (pratibimba) of God. (See above note 129). On the other hand, perhaps the doctrine described here is something like that of the Jains, such that God is the same size as the worshipper's body. Perhaps it is an echo of the Biblical doctrine that man is made in God's image, and therefore, God is to be imagined as having the same shape as a human. Perhaps it is an allusion to the argument of the fifth verse, and the Chāndogya Upaniṣad's provisional teaching that the Self as reflection of the body is to be worshipped. Or it could be a reflection of God within the worshipper's body, the Holy Spirit.
andhatamaḥpraveśanaṃ: The wording echoes the Īśa Upaniṡad, where the phrase andhaṁ tamaḣ praviśanti appears twice, an entrance into darkness for those who worship ignorance, and for those who worship nonbecoming. 133 Neither of these practices is especially egotistical, though other Upaniṡadic passages reprove arrogance.
pancavidhabhedabhānavatī: The doctrine that salvation is enjoyed in a fully differentiated and embodied way was introduced in the second verse. The use of the wording pañcavidhabheda is the clearest indication that these doctrines have to do with the Mādhvas.
abhiniveśapūrvakaṃ: abhiniveśapūrvakāṁ is also a possible reading, with emendation. As a neuter it would be taken as an adverb with the verb, as the translation offered here does. If it is adjectival, modifying saśarīratāṁ , it would mean something else: liberation, preceded by determined devotion.

Verse 7: The Refutation of the Miśras' Views
In the seventh verse Nīlakaṅṫha offers his critique of the views of the Miśras. As no new doctrines are described in this section-Nīlakaṅṫha's critique operates in an oblique way-and as the Miśras are explicitly mentioned only at the end, I here provide only an epitome of the argument that culminates in that final passage.
The point of departure for his attack appears to be the summary that Nīlakaṅṫha provided in the sixth verse: for all Miśras, the soul and God are ontologically distinct; liberation consists in reaching the world of God; it is a real world of multiplicity, like this world; there is no loss of the sense of 'I' for the saved, and no passage to a state of insensibility.
Nīlakaṅt˙ha diagnoses this view of liberation as having a basis in another passage of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad's eighth chapter, the Hārdavidyā or teaching about the heart (8.1.1ff). Chāndogya Up. 8.3.1, which Nīlakaṅt˙ha cites, maintains that the desires in the heart are real. 134 One who enters into the Self located in the heart fulfills them. Other Vedic texts are brought in to support this belief in the reality of multiplicity for the saved, which maintain the reality even of the dream world (BAU 4.3.14) and of this world (Ṙ V 2.24.12). Given these scriptural supports for the reality of dream, of this world, and of the desires in the heart, Nīlakaṅṫha has the Miśras say, one cannot rule out their actuality only because they are sublated in other states.
The refutation then begins with the same section of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where it is declared that for the one who has reached the small space in the heart, desires come true based purely on wish or intention (saṁ kalpa). 135 A verse from the Bhagavad Gītā (6.24) is invoked to this effect, as well as a Nyāyasūtra (4.2.2), in order to support the view that intention gives rise to fulfilled desire.
An Early Modern Account of the Views of the Miśras 917 reasoning. 136 If intentions are mental then they are not inherently real, but only as real as the mind that intends them. They cannot be inherently real, furthermore, because in this metaphysics that would mean that they are permanently real, and so they could not be described as coming into being for the one who reaches the space in the heart when he wishes. They would have to be there already if they were inherently real. But that would contradict the Vedic passage that says they arise for the one who enters the heart (Chāndogya Up. 8.3.1, cited above). For they cannot arise if they are already in existence.
tasmān 137 manomātrāḥ kāmāḥ 138 manasaḥ satyatvenaiva satyāḥ na svarūpeṇeti siddhamanasaś cāvirbhāvatirobhāvasvabhāvasya yad upādānam avidyākhyam asacchabditaṃ tasya vidyayā nāśo'stīti na punar āvirbhāvasambhavo 'stīti siddham amanaskatākhyakaivalyaṃ. tathā ca śrutiḥ, 'aprāṇo hy amanāḥ śubhra' iti 139 kevalātmani 140 manaḥsaṃbandhaṃ vārayati. tasmān na hārdākāśāśritāḥ kāmāḥ paramārthasatyā nāpi tatkāraṇakā bāhyā iti teṣāṃ satyatvavacanaṃ 141 miśrapralapitam eveti siddhaṃ. 7 Therefore desires, which are merely mind, are real only by virtue of the mind's reality, not inherently. And so the material cause of the mind of a being who has gained perfection-a mind that has in its nature the ability to bring things into existence and to obscure them from existence-(that mind's material cause) which is termed ignorance, which is termed the unreal, is destroyed by knowledge, and as a result there is no possibility of its further arising. In this way is proved the state of total singularity (kaivalya) called no-mindedness. And there is a śruti passage that rules out any connection of the absolute Self (kevalātman) with the mind, 'without breath, without mind, brilliant.' Therefore, it is established that the desires residing in the heart are not ultimately real, nor are the external things that are caused by them, and thus to say that they are real is mere idle chatter from the Miśras.
Notes: That desires are real, satya, means that they come true and are fulfilled. The heavenly world and the salvation of the Miśras thus envision a perfected being who continues to exercise will and to fulfill desires. On Vanamālī's depiction of liberation as the heavenly world where one has fun and never suffers, see above, under note 38.
Nīlakaṅt˙ha insists on the liberation state as being without mind in response to the denial by the Miśras of an inert state, as described above in the sixth verse.
Of the scriptural passages cited here, only ṚV 2.24.12 (víśvaṁ satyáṁ ) turns up in the works of Vanamālī (VSS 6.210), where it is indeed used to prove the reality of the world. 142 Verse 8: Further Criticism of Their Views In the eighth verse Nīlakaṅṫha offers some further characterization and criticism of the Miśras' views. If the last verse was about the metaphysics of the world of the liberated, this verse is about religious practices, and appears to focus particularly on the last group of Miśras, who maintain that God is to be worshipped as embodied or incarnate (mūrtimad). In this way the twelve systems of thought, which follow different paths when it comes to the subject of explaining ordinary reality, are united in their view concerning liberation, in which all appearance of duality is swallowed up in the state where there is no sense of 'I'. The Miśra, or his pupil, who reflects on God thinking that he and God are different from one another, being a mere beast of the gods, an idol-worshipper, does not go to the world of Brahmā, much less to the nondual state which is without fear.

Notes:
paramataniṣṭḥāṃ There are a number of ways to render this compound. niṡt˙ḣā could mean belief or devotion; para could mean later or antagonistic. Thus it is possible that Nīlakaṅt˙ha specifies the devotion of the later view, that is, of the last group of Miśras described in the sixth verse, those who worship an embodied form of the deity.
Though mention of the śiṡya of the Miśra in the verse might be for metric or alliterative reasons, the compound is glossed in the commentary as 'the Miśra or his pupil,' which suggests a return to the variety among the Miśras. The principle at stake for Nīlakaṅt˙ha is bheda or ontological difference.
The c pāda alludes to Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad Although all of the systems of thought have differences of opinion when it comes to the world of ordinary activity, on the subject of liberation there is unanimity in thinking that it is a state from which all duality has been rubbed away due to the sense of 'I' vanishing. But as for the Miśra or for his pupil, who worships God with the thought of (ontological) difference -viz. ' He is the one to be worshipped, and I am the worshipper' -he is a beast of the gods, which is to say exceedingly foolish. For there is a sacred text to that effect: 'Whoever worships a god as being other, thinking he is one thing and I am another, he does not really know. He is like a beast of burden to the gods.' (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10) The servant of an image, whether external or internal, which has a bodily form or the like, because he has not contemplated brahman, does not go to the world of Brahmā, called the Satyaloka, according the maxim (Brahmasūtra 4.3.16): 'He leads those who do not rely on images (to the world of Brahmā).' Where, then, would brahman be for him, which is without duality and free from fear? It would be nowhere. It is extremely difficult for him to attain, is the sense.
Notes: Vanamālī explains the passage from Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad in defence of understanding ontological difference between worshipper and deity. As he reads it, whoever worships a deity other than Nārāyaṅa is a fool, a creature of the gods. 160 -ābrahmakṛtatvān is a conjecture for what is represented in the two manuscripts as -ābrahmakutattvāṁ . There is nothing specifically in the verse that this compound responds to. It appears to explain what in the practices of the Miśras deprives them of the world of Brahmā.
iyam atra vyavasthā: yaḥ pratīkaṃ brahmadṛṣṭyopāste sa pratīkopāsako na brahmopāsakaḥ, tasyām upāsanāyāṃ pratīkasya mukhyatvāt, brahmabhāvasyāhāryatvāc ca. yas tu vaiśvānarādirūpaṃ brahma ahaṃgraheṇopāste sa brahmakratuḥ, na jīvakratuḥ, tatrāpi pūrvavat brahmaṇo mukhyatvāj jīvabhāvasyāhāryatvāc ca. tatraivaṃ sati karmopāsti\12v[jñānakāṇḍātmake vede karmāṇi svargādyarthāni, upāsanāni kramamuktasthānaprāptyarthāni 161 , jñānaṃ sadyaḥkaivalyaprāpakam iti prayojanatrayam uktaṃ. tatra jñānakāṇḍārtham atyantam apalapyopāsanākāṇḍasya pratīkopāstirūpe karmaṇi tātparyaṃ varṇayatā karmakāṇḍa evaikaḥ śeṣito bhavati. tathā svargasya nityatvaṃ ca 'tad yatheha 162 karmajito lokaḥ kṣīyata evam evāmutra puṇyajito lokaḥ kṣīyata' iti 163 'yat kṛtakaṃ tad anityam' ity 164 anumānānugṛhītaśrutiviruddhaṃ cety evamādi bahuviruddhaṃ tadarūḍham ity a 165 numānam api śiṣṭānāṃ trapākaram iti uparamyate. 8 Here is the situation: whoever contemplates an image seeing it as brahman, he is an image-worshipper, not a contemplator of brahman, because the image is primary in his worship, and its being brahman is incidental. He on the other hand who contemplates brahman in the form of Agni Vaiśvānara or the like, thinking of it as himself, he meditates on brahman, not his own soul, because in this case too, as before, brahman is primary and its being his own jīva is incidental. This being so, when it comes to the Veda, which has sections on ritual, contemplation, and knowledge, a threefold purpose is set out: rituals are for the sake of heaven and the like, contemplations are for the sake of reaching the place where one gains liberation in due course, knowledge is for getting one to final singularity directly. Here (the Miśras) dismiss entirely the purpose of the section on knowledge, and explain the intention of the section on contemplation as rituals that take the form of worshipping images, leaving only the section on rituals to stand. And furthermore (the Miśras' doctrine) that heaven is permanent contradicts the śruti passage (Chāndogya Up. 8.1.6) which says that just as whatever has been won by actions in this world wastes away, so in the next world does whatever has been won by merit wastes away. This śruti passage is supported 160 VSS 6.142. The same verse also appears as ŚSD 74. Cf. ŚŚP p. 25. 161 N prāptyarthābhi. H, J prāptyarthāni. 162 N, H yathā iha. J atheha. 163 Chāndogya Up. 8.1.6. 164 Nyāyabindu of Dharmakīrti 3.11. 165 N tadarūḋhaddha-, H -tarūḋhadya-?, J tadarūḋhatya-by the inference that any manufactured thing is impermanent. (The Miśras') inference, which is not mounted up on that (śruti), is contradicted by that śruti, and contradicted in many ways. It is a matter of embarrassment to the learned, and so I leave off.
Notes: Madhva disagrees with the Advaitins over the contemplation of symbols of brahman or pratīkas. 166 There is something troubled in the text of the final paragraph, as it is represented in the two manuscripts. There are two ca particles whose force is unclear. I take the first with the initial tathā of the section, and the second as linking the śruti passage and the inference about what is manufactured.
Verses 9 and 10: Nondualism as the Teaching of the Upaniṣads In the ninth and tenth verses Nīlakaṅṫha moves away from the Miśras to the significance of the Upaniṡads and their systematic treatment in the Vedānta. Since the Miśras are not discussed here explicitly or implicitly, only a summary is provided.
Nīlakaṅt˙ha rules out the validity of interpretations of the Upaniṡads that do not maintain brahman to be one and real. 167 He does this in an unexpected way, by appeal to Vātsyāyana's commentary on the Nyāyasūtra. 168 He draws on a section of the Nyāyasūtra that offers refutations of other schools of thought. The sūtra in question is about those who believe only in number (saṁ khyaikāntavādāḣ). Here Vātsyāyana mentions a group who believe that all is one, because it is without distinction from the existent (sarvam ekaṁ sadaviśeṡāt). 169 The refutations then follow, but Nīlakaṅṫha's point, following Vācaspati Miśra's subcommentary, is that what Vātsyāyana is discussing here is the position of the nondualists. From this he concludes, not entirely fairly, that even the Naiyāyikas think the Vedāntins maintain nondifference. Even though for the Naiyāyikas the Vedāntins are not logical in their thinking, the fact of their characterization stills shows that nondualism-the doctrine that brahman is one and real-is generally understood to be the view of Vedānta, Nīlakaṅṫha argues. Therefore there is no need to be confused by schools of Upaniṡadic interpretation which propose that brahman is ontologically different from other things, or that it is both different and non-different, or that some qualified form of brahman is non-different.
By way of conclusion, Nīlakaṅt˙ha turns to the portions of two verses of the Ṙ gvedic creation hymn, the Nāsadīya, in support of his doxographic view as a 166 Sharma, Philosophy 1986, 410-14. 167 Part of the text of the introduction to this section was cited above. See note 8. 168 Nyāyasūtra 4.1.41. 169 Given the commentary, it appears that Nīlakaṅṫha understands four independent words, with sad and aviśeṡāt as uncompounded. Otherwise Vācaspati.
whole. 170 The first verse, nāśad āsīd nó sád āsīd tadāńīm. nāśīd rájo nó vyòmā paró yát, rules out as the fundamental principle the emptiness (ásat) of the Mādhyamikas before creation, the stream-reality/mental stuff (sát) of the Yogācārins, Sautrāntikas, and Vaibhāṡikas, and the primordial element or atoms (rájas) of the Sāṁ khyas, Yogins, Naiyāyikas and Vaiśeṡikas. In the same way this verse rules out the existent as mixed with māyā (paró vyòmā). Passages of the third verse, 'táma āsīt támasā gūḷháṃ ágre' and 'tuchyénābhvápihitaṃ' show that the fundamental principle cannot be both real and unreal. From this Nīlakaṅt˙ha concludes that the Ṙ gveda itself maintains that the existent is one and uncombined. 171

Conclusion
These, then, are the passages that constitute Nīlakaṅṫha's treatment of the Miśras in his Ṣaṭtantrīsāra. As a way of concluding let us consider how the Miśras should be identified, and what the implications are for the history of Advaitin doxography, given their treatment in Nīlakaṅṫha's text.

Who were the Miśras?
We have operated under the assumption that the Miśras were probably followers of Madhva, based on doctrinal similarities that have been noted and discussed ad loc. The most telling among these similarities include: the doctrine that the world is real and diverse, and ontologically distinct from God and from the souls, all of which are distinct from one another (pañcabhedavāda); the doctrine that liberation consists in reaching the world of God (muktir īśvaralokaprāptiḣ), which is a fully differentiated world where the saved enjoy themselves as embodied beings who never suffer and do not return to saṁ sāra; the doctrine that both the worlds of the liberated and of the damned are eternal (svargasya nityatā), and that God and the liberated are embodied forever in heaven, the damned in a hell called Tamas; the doctrine that the path to God lies in being God's servant (upāstir dāsabhāvena), with the feeling that God is someone different, not someone in whom to see oneself; the doctrine that punishment for misdeeds in hell is followed by reward for good deeds in worlds of enjoyment for those who are liberated in stages (yātanā, bhogabhūmi); that both yogic perception and time have been picked out as markers of the Miśras' strangeness, (the Mādhvas having distinctive doctrines of both, though not exactly the ones that Nīlakaṅṫha describes); and that there might be a figure referred to as the son of the wind (vātātmaja), a well-known epithet of Madhvācārya himself.
Further circumstantial evidence in favour of the identification can be found in Nīlakaṅt˙ha's critique, elsewhere in his writings, of doctrines that are similar to the ones he attributes to this group, though they are identified there only as sectarian fanatics. One such critique is found in Nīlakaṅt˙ha's commentary on the 170 ṚV 10.129.1ab, 3a, 3c. 171 Note that Vanamālī has a fairly extended discussion of the meaning of these verses of Ṙ V 10.129 at the end of his section rejecting brahman's indescribability-anirvācyatve pramāṅabhaṅgaḣ.
Mahābhārata, when he tackles the first properly philosophical verses of the epic (I.1.22-25 in the Vulgate). The passage constitutes one of the first scholastic tours de force in the commentary, a justification of the expansion of nondualist ontology to include five states of brahman, (the added one being Viṡṅu as embodied deity). Nīlakaṅt˙ha there provides an extended discussion of the nature of God's form and its significance for worship. He mentions the beliefs of sectarian theists concerning the permanence of heaven, God's embodiedness, and the forms that contemplation of brahman may take.
At one point in this passage, Nīlakaṅṫha mentions the doctrine that just being in the world of God constitutes liberation, (what Madhva and Vanamālī, following the Pañcarātra, would call sālokya), and that the Lord of this world is the only God. Such a view, Nīlakaṅṫha thinks, is ignorant of the tradition of practice of meditation which dissolves the mind entirely into the pure brahman. It goes against a Brahmasūtra (4.4.16) and a passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4.3.23). This Upaniṡadic passage says that there is no experience of multiplicity in liberation because there is no other thing to see then, and thus duality (or actually multiplicitous reality) is just a mirage. To insist (as Madhva and Vanamālī do) that Viṡṅu is the supreme, while Ś iva is just an individual soul, or to insist the opposite, and to criticize other movements by saying that texts such as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa or the Sūtasaṃhitā, which propound the excellence of either Viṡṅu or some other deity (at the expense of others), are not really authored by Vyāsa or other sages, or are in fact demonic, is based on an insufficient grasp of the customary and established practice of reading these texts. 172 Nīlakaṅṫha's criticism here echoes the criticism of the Miśras that we see in the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra.
(kramamuktas); and the mention of the gates of hell, which are open during the world's age and closed at its end.
Some doctrines, furthermore, which are presented as belonging to the Miśras seem only indirectly connected to their Mādhva counterparts: yogic perception as proof of the reality of the world, or time as superseding karma in explaining the world's justice. The latter should more properly be inherent nature (svabhāva), to be in keeping with Mādhva doctrine, something that is only indirectly acknowledged by Nīlakaṅṫha. Nīlakaṅt˙ha's account of the nature of the embodiment of souls after death is not maintained consistently throughout. The damned and the eventually saved are rejoined with their earthly bodies, while the nature of the bodies of the innocent after death is not specified, and the liberated have bodies made of subtle material.
Of course it is possible that Nīlakaṅt˙ha is simply not getting some parts of the Miśras' doctrines right; or that I have not found the specific passages in Madhva, Jayatīrtha, or others that confirm the identification, especially in the works of Vanamālī, many of which remain unpublished.

Why Not Call Them Mādhvas?
And yet, if these doctrines belong to Madhva's school of thought, why does Nīlakaṅt˙ha call them Miśras? Why not just call them Mādhvas? There is evidence in Nīlakaṅt˙ha's other works to show that he does know of Madhvācārya. He is mentioned in two summarizing verses in the Vedāntakataka, Nīlakaṅt˙ha's early independent work. 173 In the introductory or paribhāṡā section of this text, Nīlakaṅt˙ha makes reference to the followers of Rāmānuja, who are worthy of ridicule by all people, and to Madhva, even talking of whom is not approved of by the intelligent. 174 At the conclusion of the second part, the anticommentary to Appayya Dīkṡita's Nyāyarakṣāmaṇi, Madhva is mentioned in the context of an argument between nondualists and realists. Nīlakaṅt˙ha represents himself as doing his bit to restore the understanding of the Upaniṡads' uniformity in propounding nondualism, a truth that had to be wrested by Nṙsiṁ hāśrama from the gang of bandits of illogic-Madhva and others, and that had to be protected by Madhusūdana Sarasvatī. 175 That said, there are not many other passages in Nīlakaṅṫha's works that name Madhva or his followers. Nīlakaṅt˙ha is much more preoccupied with what he sees as rogue Advaitins. It may be that he knew of Madhva only in the context of the defence of Advaitin philosophical claims from the technical criticisms that appeared in works like Vyāsatīrtha's Nyāyāmṛta. The defence is represented in the works of Advaitin authors that Nīlakaṅṫha demonstrably knew: Nṙsiṁ hāśrama's Bhedadhikkāra and Madhusūdana's Advaitasiddhi. Beyond this strictly philosophical controversy, it is possible that the religious doctrines of Madhva, a south Indian, 173 Cf. Minkowski, "Vedāntakataka" (2016

Why Call Them Miśras?
Why call them Miśras, again? We appear to be confronted with several possibilities. It is possible that Nīlakaṅt˙ha understood the Miśras to be northern representatives of the Mādhva tradition with some distinctive ideas of their own; or that he understood the Miśras to be something mostly different from the Mādhvas; or that he did not recognize them as Mādhvas at all, though they were; or that he did not think of them as Mādhvas, because they were not at all, in which case Vanamālimiśra would probably not be the Miśra in question.
I have proposed an identification with Vanamālimiśra for largely incidental reasons, assuming the first of these possibilities, that Nīlakaṅt˙ha was describing the views of a follower of Madhvācārya who was a Miśra Brahmin. The similarities in doctrine between Vanamālī's works and Nīlakaṅṫha's Miśras have been pointed out in the notes to the translation above. Among prominent authors of works in the Mādhva tradition, the only one called Miśra is Vanamālidāsa Miśra or Vanamālimiśra. From the colophons of his works we know that Vanamālimiśra was born near Vrindavan to a Vaiṡṅava family, and that he was a follower of Madhva and a worshipper of Hayagrīva. 177 He was active in the middle of the seventeenth century, the same era in which Nīlakaṅt˙ha was active. 178

Why Not Think it is Vanamālī
On the other hand, it must be pointed out that Nīlakaṅṫha does not elsewhere use the term 'Miśra' in the sense in which it is used in the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra. The only usage of 'Miśra' to identify an author or thinker that I have been able to locate in Nīlakaṅt˙ha's other writings occurs in the first part of the Vedāntakataka. There it refers to a statement made by Vācaspati Miśra in his Bhāmatī commentary on Ś aṅkarācārya's Brahmasūtrabhāṣya. 179 One might explain this absence of the Miśras elsewhere in Nīlakaṅṫha's works as a sign that the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is a late 176 There were centres of Madhva thought and belief in Banaras in the seventeenth century, however, though this appears to have been forgotten later. Cf. O'Hanlon, "Letters Home" (2010, p. 11); Deshpande, 'Winner' (2011); Varkhedkar's Sanskrit introduction to his 1936 edition of Vanamālī's Madhvamukhālaṅkāra, where he speaks of contemporary ignorance of the existence of northern Mādhvas, p. 2. taddarśanakṣaṇa eva uttarabhārate dvaitasiddhāntasya nāsīt pracāra iti bhramo me vigalitaḥ. 177 Gode, "Mārutamaṅḋana" (1946) ;Narahari, "Mārutamaṅḋana" (1948). 178 There was at least one other figure of the period called Vanamālimiśra, a pupil of Bhaṫṫoji Dīkṡita in Banaras. See Gode, "Pupil of Bhaṫṫoji Dīkṡita" (1947). Given the consistency of the colophons in 'our' Vanamāli's Vaiṡṅava works, however, and given how different the colophons found in the works of the grammarian are, these two were probably different people. Cf. Tagore, "Ś rutisiddhāntaprakāśa" (1970). 179 miśrās tu svena rūpeṅābhiniṡpadya paraṁ jyotir upasaṁ padyata it vyācakhyuḣ. "mukhaṁ vyādāya svapitī"tivac ca kvtāpratyayopapattiṁ prāhuḣ. VK paribhāṣā SB 27520 f. 27r. Cf Bhāmatī on BrSū 4.4.3 yat saṁ padya niṡpadyata iti tan, mukhaṁ vyādāya svapitītivat. tasmāj jyotir upasaṁ panno mukta iti sūktam. Bakre's edition, pp. 1006-1007. work, perhaps written only after Vanamālī came to prominence. Vanamālī wrote a critique of Brahmānanda Sarasvatī's defence of the Advaitasiddhi, the Gurucandrikā, which is usually assigned to the late seventeenth century. 180 We know independently that Nīlakaṅṫha was still active in the 1690s, if nearing the end of his career then.
It must be conceded, however, that some of the most salient doctrines of the Miśras, from Nīlakaṅṫha's point of view, are not prominent in Vanamālī's works, at least not in the terms in which Nīlakaṅt˙ha describes them, such as yogic perception and time, and the fivefold difference. 181 Vanamālī was classified by Dasgupta as a Nimbārkī, that is, not as a bhedavādin but as a bhedābhedavādin. 182 Potter has labeled some of his works Dvaita and others Dvaitādvaita. 183 That Vanamālīmiśra has been difficult for modern scholars to classify might explain why Nīlakaṅṫha would speak of him as something other than a Mādhva.
The last difficulty to mention here comes from the sixth verse of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra, where Nīlakaṅt˙ha refers to three groups among the Miśras. In the eighth verse, furthermore, he refers to the pupil (śiṣya) of the Miśras. To date I have found no reference to a commentary on Vanamālī's works. Who, then, were these subvarieties of Miśras, if we identify Vanamālī as our starting point? Who was the pupil?

Abrahamic Religions?
What if we were to opt for the last possibility, viz. that the Miśras were not Mādhvas at all, leaving Vanamālī out of the picture altogether? After reading the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra I initially suspected that the Miśras were exponents of the Abrahamic religions. The reasons for this suspicion have been mentioned earlier: their doctrines of a permanent heaven and hell, of salvation as attending God in heaven; of karma simply as moral behaviour in this life, which is requited in the next without fail or delay; of God as someone whose laws are to be followed with servile obedience, whose minions oversee the reward and punishment of deeds; of hellish punishments in burning heat; and of the gates of hell. None of these struck Nīlakaṅt˙ha as being in keeping with what he saw as mainstream Indian thinking, and one can see why. 184 On this view, the term Miśra is a larger category that would include both Muslims and Christians. The sixth verse of the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra, which describes the subsets of Miśras would then be about Christians and Muslims more specifically. 180 Vanamālī's text is called the Taraṅginīsaurabha. Khuperkar, ŚSD Introduction p. xxii. 181 The reality of difference between the soul and God has been insisted on throughout the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra as the crucial doctrine of the Miśras. On this point there is clear confirmation in Vanamālī's works. It is, rather, the insistence on five-fold difference that is more difficult to locate. 182 Dasgupta History 3. 440-44, based on the VSS. 183 Potter, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Bibliography. The online version labels the unpublished Viṣṇutattvaprakāśa and Vedāntadīpa Dvaita, VSS, ŚSP, ŚŚD Dvaitādvaita. The second, earlier edition of the bibliography (1983) listed all works as Dvaita. An excerpt of the VSS is summarized in the Dvaitādvaita volume (15) of the EIP (Agrawal and Potter 2013, pp. 555-583). 184 I am not the first to make this mistake. See e.g. Grierson, "Mādhvas, Madhvāchārīs" (1916), for early suggestions that the Mādhvas had been influenced by Abrahamic religions.
There we get the idea that God has three forms: an unmanifest one, a sort of reflection possibly in the body of the worshipper, and a entirely embodied form, perhaps in an attempt at describing the Trinity.
There might be some additional evidence in favour of this identification, implied by the placement of a passage in the other Ṣaṭtantrīsāra. As mentioned above, this anonymous text is twinned with Nīlakaṅṫha's in its organization and conception. In the commentary on the first verse of the anonymous text, the author goes through the views of the twelve schools (with some additions) concerning subject and object (jñāna and jñeya), more or less sorted into the same categories of separated, mixed, and so on that Nīlakaṅt˙ha uses. At the end of this discussion, at the point where Nīlakaṅt˙ha introduces the Miśras, the anonymous author mentions the views of the Muslims. In an echo of what Nīlakaṅt˙ha says of the Miśras, the text brings in the Yavanopādhyāya, probably Muhammad, as saying that even in salvation there is perception of multiplicity. The author remarks that some of the Yavanopādhyāya's contemporary followers are seen among us. He then refers to an epigrammatic verse of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī which dismisses them as not worth bothering over: "What knowledgeable person would give answer to the mere semblance of criticism that this addled pathetic 'philosopher' of untruth baselessly bloviates aloud? The lion does not roar back every time the cat in the village meows." 185 To add to the confusion, it should be noted that Madhusūdana penned this verse with a Mādhva in mind, Vyāsatīrtha. 186 And, in fact, Vanamālī offers a riposte to this verse in the closing verses of his Śrutisiddhāntaprakāśa, echoing the language of Madhusūdana's epigram: "The magnificence of Hari is propounded in the Upaniṡads. It is to be contemplated by the best of sages. A demonic man, lower than a Buddhist, bloviates baselessly that this is not so, offering hostility to Kṙṡṅa, who is the same as the All. What knowledgeable person would undertake to answer him? Does the lion roar back at the howl of the jackal?". 187

Why Not Abrahamic Religions
If the Miśras were indeed followers of Abrahamic religions, that would raise more questions than it answered. How would one explain their being called Miśras? Why have they not been 'othered' as Yavanas or Mlecchas, as so much of the contemporary discourse of the period would expect? And why that name in particular? The stated purpose of Nīlakaṅt˙ha's Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is to show that the Upaniṡads have a unified and correct interpretation, and to exclude certain views from a canonical scheme. Why bother over 'alien' religions that did not participate even in the assumptions of this conversation, when no one had done so before? How, moreover, would one explain the claims about yogic perception, the apparent reliance on Upaniṡadic passages, and the reference to many other items of Brahminical thought such as kalpas, karma, and so on. It is possible of course that this is all part of Nīlakaṅṫha's imaginative reworking of the doctrines of Christians and Muslims into a Sanskritic idiom. Or it could be that the Miśras were Brahmin converts who had carried out this reworking themselves. The reliance on astrology might in fact be the least surprising aspect of this identification, given the importance of historical astrology in the Islamicate knowledge traditions. 188

Miśras and Mādhvas in Advaitin Doxography
If the Miśras did turn out to be Muslims or Christians, the passage from Nīlakaṅt˙ha's Mahābhārata commentary that was cited above, which echoes the criticisms of the Miśras but is directed at sectarian Hindu worshippers, would suggest that they occupied a similar place in the nondualist topography of thought in his era. And indeed, Advaitin doxographies can be said to converge in their treatment of Mādhvas and of Mlecchas, or really in their omission of treatment. As we have seen, the author of the anonymous Ṣaṭtantrīsāra invokes Madhusūdana's verse about Vyāsatīrtha to justify cutting off discussion of the Yavanas. 189 Madhusūdana seems to have taken his own advice. In the Prasthānabheda he demotes the heterodox schools to the status of foreign religions, i.e. as undeserving of description, because they do not conduce to understanding the Vedas or to fulfilling the ends of man any more than barbarians do. 190 The Mādhvas, meanwhile, are not mentioned at all. Nor do they appear in such other short works as the Vedāntakalpalatikā and the Siddhāntabindu, where Madhusūdana surveys the available schools of thought. In the Siddhāntabindu, for example, Madhusūdana includes in his enumeration of views the Pāñcarātras and Pāśupatas, as well as the "sextet of nāstikas" that we have seen-Cārvākas, Jainas and the four schools of Buddhism. The Ś rīvaiṡṅavas (tridaṅḋinaḣ) also appear in the scale of standpoints, but not the Mādhvas. Notwithstanding his Advaitasiddhi, dedicated to rejecting the Nyāyāmṛta of Vyāsatīrtha, Madhusūdana does not include the Mādhvas in these synthetic discussions. This holds true for doxographic passages in other Advaitin texts, with the exception of Vidyāraṅya's Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha. Elsewhere, the views of the Yavanas, when they are mentioned at all, are brought up only to rule out their relevance.
Madhusūdana appears to have greatly influenced the formulation of the doxographic passages of Nīlakaṅṫha's works, in the construction of the doxography and in the scope of its inclusion. And yet in the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra Nīlakaṅṫha has departed from Madhusūdana and done something novel. Nor has he borrowed his coverage from Vidyāraṅya. The depiction of the Mādhvas in the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha is quite different in approach. Whoever the Miśras were, whether Mādhvas, or followers of the God of Abraham, or of some unknown sage, they had not come in for this sort of coverage before.