Free Will in Visiadvaita Vedanta Raman

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Religion Compass9/9 (2015): 287296, 10.1111/rec3.12163

Free Will in Viistdvaita Vednta: Rmnuja, Sudarana Sri

and Venkat

antha1

Elisa Freschi*Austrian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Free will may not be a universal problem, but it is also not only confined to Christianity, as shown in thecase of Viis

tdvaita Vednta. The authors of this school of Indian philosophy, founded in the 11th c. and

still influential up until today, had to face the challenge of accounting for human autonomy and Godsomnipotence. Their solution was to create a precinct for free will in human minds, whereas all actions

depend on God. Thus, God does not interfere with the initial determination of human free will and itlater supports human intentions, thus permitting that they are turned into action.

1. Introduction

There are two opposite tendencies in the contemporary debate about free will outside of theJudeo-Christian tradition. On the one hand, some scholarsespecially in Western philosophydepartmentsregard free will as a universal philosophical problem, along with ontology or thephilosophy of agency. On the other hand, and perhaps as a reaction, some scholarsespeciallythose working on non-Western philosophytend to see free will as a purely localised problem,

one that only has to do with specific historico-philosophical circumstances, such as Augustine sor Luthers impact on Christian theology and little else (see Garfield 2014; Bartley 2014).

The present article will adopt an intermediate position, one which is dictated by the textsdealt with in the article itself. In fact, although free will did not gain in Indian philosophy andtheology the pre-eminence it gained in Western thought, it was phrased as a problem, for in-stance in some texts of Viis

tdvaita Vednta. This shows that free will is at least a problem that

may universally arise under certain historico-philosophical circumstances. These circumstancescan be briefly referred to as a strong belief in an agent subject (as opposed to what happens inBuddhist philosophy and in some contemporary philosophical trends following recent develop-ments in neuropsychology) and the awareness of an opposing force.

This opposing force may be, for instance, the idea of an unchanging destiny (as in the Stoicsref lections on free will) or of the law of karma, if this is considered (against Bartley 2014) strongenough to jeopardise ones autonomy. Since the Viis

tdvaita Vednta school belongs to a phase

of Indian philosophy during which theism was frequently embraced by philosophers (seeMcCrea forthcoming (b)), the main force opposing free will, for Viis

tdvaita thinkers and

Christian ones alike, is Gods will.

1.1. VIISTDVAITA VEDNTA

The Viistdvaita Vednta is a South Indian philosophical school traditionally regarded as having

been founded by Rmnuja (traditional dates: 10171137). Its main systematiser wasVenkatantha (also known as VedntaDeika, traditional dates 12691370), who was a younger

contemporary of Sudarana Sri ( f l. 1290). In the 17th c., the Viistdvaita Vednta School split

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into two currents, the Vatakalai and the Ten_ kalai, with the former explicitly considering

Venkatantha as its founder (see Raman 2007). The Viis

tdvaita Vednta still constitutes the

theological background of most Vaisnavas in South India.

The Viistdvaita Vednta recognises the Brahmastra(henceforth BS) as its root text and

Visnu as God and as the only independent reality of which everything else is a qualification. This

means that, unlike in the monist perspective of Advaita Vednta, the world is recognised asexistent exactly insofar as it is a qualification of God. More precisely, living beings are consideredlimbs of Gods body, since God can act through them at His wish.2 Within South Asian soteriology,a karma-, jna- and bhaktimrga (path of ritual action, of knowledgeand of devotion)were known at the time of the dawn of Viis

tdvaita Vednta. Viis

tdvaita Vednta au-

thors, especially from Venkatantha onwards, developed a fourth way to approach the

Ultimate, namely by surrendering (prapatti) to God as an alternative to the traditionalthree ways, all deemed too difficult.

The doctrinal split between the Vatakalai and the Ten_ kalai schoolsand their forerunners

(see Mumme 1988 and Freschi forthcoming (c))regarded, among other elements, the issue offree will, with the Ten_kalai being believed to stress even more the need to abandon oneself to

Gods mercy, like a kitten carried by his mother (see Mumme 1988, especially pp. 67),although the terminology concerning surrender is present, as will be shown also in the presentarticle, also in authors of the Vat

akalai current and in their common predecessors (on this shared

background, see Freschi forthcoming (c)).Viis

tdvaita Vednta authors have written in Tamil (Venkat

antha and other authors,

especially in the Ten_ kalai), Man

ipravla (a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit, used by Venkatantha

and other authors in order to address scholarly matters in a Tamil form) and Sanskrit (the earlyauthors of Viis

tdvaita Vednta up to Venkat

antha, the majority of authors of the Vat

akalai).

The present article will focus on the latter sources.

1.2. ONTOLOGY VS. ETHICS

Theories concerning the nature of reality (i.e., ontology) often clash with ethical concerns when itcomes to the issue of free will. In contemporary philosophy, this is often due to ontology beingstrictly deterministic. Such determinism is explained by appealing to different reasons, ranging from(in the last century) being completely determined by ones first years to (today) the claim that theneurosciences seem to prove that we elaborate reasons for doing X only after having started doing it( for instance, the neurons with the information for moving ones arm start delivering the informa-tion prior to the cerebral elaboration of the rationale of this action, so that the elaboration of motivesseems to be an epiphenomenon not really needed for the sake of acting, but only for rationalising

it3

). However, the denial of any form of free will entails the lack of meaning of any form of ethicaltheorysince nothing can be chosen anyway. Moreover, no matter how strong the arguments fordeterminism are, it is hard to deny that one does psychologically feel free, e.g., to move onesarm. In short, ontological arguments seem to clash with ethical and psychological ones.

Within Viistdvaita Vednta, a similar tension regards the opposition between the ritual per-

spective, which entails the necessity of free will (how else could ritual prescriptions make sense?),and the Vedntin theological perspective, which is quite clear in maintaining that the ultimatereality (called brahman) is not only the efficient cause (nimittakran

a) of the world, but also its

material cause (updnakrana). The consequent equation is the relationship between God and

the world to the relationship between a person and her body. If the world is literally the body

of God, which He can move at will, what space can be left for free will? In short, several con-trasting trajectories (ritualistic, theological-ontological and theological-mystical, see section 2)intersect in the Viis

tdvaita Vednta concept of free will.

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2. State of the Field

Only few essays have been dedicated to free will in Viistdvaita Vednta or in one or more of

its exponents. Mumme (1985) and chapter 2 in Mumme (1988) focus on the tension desig-nated in section 1 as the origin of the problem of free will in Viis

tdvaita Vednta, namely

the tension between the general philosophical affirmation of the souls agency (jvakartr

tva)

and the devotional negation of it as expressed in the songs of the lvrs. The lvrs arerecognised as saints in Viistdvaita Vednta whose most frequent topos is the saints indignity

to attain God on his or her own and his or her absolute need of His mercy (Mumme 1985,p. 99). Mumme opposes the Ten_kalai current (or its alleged predecessors, whom she calls theSrirangamcryas) to Venkat

antha, although, as seen in Section 1.1, it is arguable whether

these teachers belonged to the same tradition before Venkatanthas synthesis of various

elements within a new Vaisnava theology. Like Mumme, Ganeri (2014) is also sensitive to-

wards the religious background of Rmnujas philosophy thus adopting an emic view-point of Rmnujas thought. More in detail, Ganeri attempts to outline Rmnujastheological positions on agency, subjecthood and free will among human beings as well as

in the liberated state.Although not directly a study of free will, Lipner (1986) contains interesting pages on the in-tersection of ontology and ethics and thus also on free will in Rmnuja, this time from ahistorico-philosophical perspective, which does not feel the need to adopt an emic perspective.Implicitly sharing a similar standpoint, McCrea ( forthcoming (a)) focuses on the problem ofGods free will in Venkat

antha: Is God free not to deliver to a sacrificer the result he has been

sacrificing for? If He is, then the Sacred Texts lie when they assert the potency of sacrifices and this will also undermine the authority of God, which is directly linked to the Sacred Textssanctioning it. If He is not free not to deliver the sacrifices result, He is not omnipotent. Sim-ilarly, Bartley (2014) dedicates some lines to the problem of the intersection of Gods will and

karma in Rmnuja (on this topic see also below, Section 3.2). If God has to take karma intoaccount, He is no longer free, whereas if He does not take it into account, He is unfair.

Concerning both problems, the present author has argued that Venkatanthas solution is to

claim that Gods being pleased by sacrifices amounts to the sacrificial energy, and that the karmais tantamount to Gods justice, so that there is nothing external to Him which could compro-mise His freedom (see Freschi 2015). Last, Freschi ( forthcoming (a)) focuses on a reconstructionof the positions of Rmnuja, Sudarana Sri and Venkat

antha from the perspective of the his-

tory of theological and philosophical ideas.

3. Rmnuja: Libertarianism within Determinism

In the Ved

rthasan

graha, an objector staged by Rmnuja observes that if God is omnipotent,then there can be no human being who is fully responsible for his or her action. This, in turn,

is expressed in terms of responsibility forritualactions as prescribed in the Sacred Texts, whichalso presuppose that one is free to perform them. In fact, this responsibility is something whichlies beyond each persons possibilities, says Rmnujas opponent, since one can only act if Godmakes him or her act.

Common to Western speculations on free will is also the appeal to Sacred Texts stating thatthere is no such thing as free will:4

He alone causes the person whom He wishes to lead out of these worlds, to perform a good deed. He

alone causes the person whom He wishes to fall down to perform an evil deed. (Kauitaki Upanisad 3.8)5

Even more striking is the conclusion derived by Rmnujas opponent:

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Thus, since He is the one who causes [people] to perform good or evil deeds, He is cruel. ( str1894,p. 138)

Rmnujas answer to this (powerful) objection is that an individual can develop indepen-dently the resolution to act or to cease to act. In other words, the individuals constitute God sphysical body in their physicality, whereas their psychic component appears to be indepen-dently able to conceive thoughts. Accordingly, God completes what humans have only desiredor thought. In Western terms, choices appear to be completely free (in this sense, one would beinclined to label Rmnujas position a libertarian one), whereas actions are completely bound(in fact, animals and human beings only act insofar as God acts through them, just like the bodyslimbs are not at all free to move independently). Thus, as for actions, Rmnujas position iscloser to determinism. To put it briefly and in Rmnujas own words:

He (God) rules as one who permits (anuman-) [that each conscious being undertakes the action s/hewants to undertake]. [] Therefore, [each conscious being], having received the power [to think,

undertake or cease an action], undertakes, ceases to act or [thinks] by himself/herself alone. TheSupreme Self observes the one who does so without interfering. Therefore, everything is logical. Incontrast [to what the opponent claimed], the fact of causing to do good or evil acts is the content ofa specic arrangement, it is not generally directed to all. (str1894, p. 141)

This last sentence implies that God does indeed inf luence the actions performed by humanbeings but that this happens in a regulated way on the basis of their intentions and not in all casesindiscriminately. The following lines in Rmnujas text explain that God is well-disposedtowards those who are themselves prone to good actions. It is especially noteworthy thatRmnuja includes here, in favour of his (libertarian-deterministic) view, the same lines of

theBhagavadgt

(henceforth BhG) which will be used by another Vedntin, namely Madhva(12381317), as evidence of the absolute lack of free will:

A different case is that of a person who rst undertook actions by themselves alone, which were beyondmeasure in agreement [with Gods will]. God, pleased, gives them the connection to a benevolentmind and by doing so, He puts them in motion towards virtue. A person who, by contrast, undertakesactions which are beyond measure hostile [to Gods will] receives from God a cruel mind. By so doing,God Himself puts them in motion towards cruel deeds. As it has been said by God: To those who aredevout and constantly concentrated I, pleased, give the connection with an intention through whichthey can reach me. In order to have compassion with them alone I, residing in the nature of the Self,

destroy the obscurity produced by ignorance through the brilliant ame of knowledgeand For everand ever I send these evil, vicious and vile people to demonic births only(BhG 10.1011 and 16.19).(str1894, pp. 141142)

According to the text above, the precinct of free will lies at the very beginning of the processleading to actions, even before one determines them precisely, since Rmnuja says that Godgives a benevolentmindto those who have wished to do good (and vice versa).

A further important point regards the nature of Gods intervention, which is identified byRmnuja, Venkat

antha (see Section 4.1) and SudaranaSri (see Section 5) unanimously with

the rootanuman-. This is a technical term indicating the act of inciting by a superior person in

regard to his or her inferior. Accordingly, anuman- is used here as an active way of allowingsomeone to do something, which includes supporting them if they are not able to do so ontheir own.

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3.1. FREE WILL AND THEODICY

A problem which is current in many theodicies is why does God not prevent evil, if He isomnipotent? Rmnuja discusses this topic with the simile of two people possessing sharedwealth. If one of them desires to give it away and the other merely consents, the merit of thegiving accrues to the first one:

If two people have shared wealth, this cannot become the property of another unless the other of thetwo agrees. Nonetheless, [once] the permission of the other one is performed autonomously, the result[of that action] belongs to that (the rst) person alone. [] The fact that the one who is able to make[people] desist from evil acts permits [these acts] does not procure that He is cruel. (rBh ad BS 2.3.41)

Then, Rmnuja adds that God:

1. settles the distinction between good and evil acts,2. assigns to each one the capacity to rule over their bodies, sense faculties, etc.,3. teaches through the Sacred Texts what should be done,4. controls each person from within, as his or her inner soul, by means of permitting them to

realise their intentions.

Therefore, there is no room for the objections concerning the fact that the human autonomyor Gods compassion would be diminished. By contrast, God would make a mistake if He wereto have compassion for someone who does not want to receive it:

In fact, compassion independent of ones own nal goals consists in the fact that one cannot bear some-one elses sufferance. And this [compassion], when it is present also towards those who seek to transgressHis command, does not amount to a virtue. [] In this case (of people transgressing Gods command)

only repressing them is a virtue because otherwise there would be the undesired consequence that,e.g., stopping a hostile person would no longer be a virtue. (rBh ad BS 2.3.41)

3.2. FREE WILL AND KARMA

A possible further question would be: Who (or what) moves people towards God or against Him?Who, if not God Himself? TherBh does not raise the problem in the passages quoted above.However, one might suggest that Rmnuja, sharing the pan-Indian belief in the system ofkarma, would have answeredif askedthat one conceives good intentions because of previous

virtuous births. In theVedrthasangraha, it is in fact stated that God can only be reached throughdevotion and that devotion is possible only for one whose multitude of sins gathered throughendless births have been destroyed by the unsurpassed accumulation of good deeds. However,this statement is counterbalanced by the next one, attributing devotion to one who is turnedtowards Him because he has taken refuge at the lotus feet of God(str1894, pp. 142144).

Thus, Rmnuja suggests the need to get ridpresumably: tof irstget ridof ones accumu-lated sins through the accumulation of an unsurpassed amount of good deeds. This presumablymeans that these need to be accumulated through a large number of previous birthsa factwhich would ipso facto deprive ones present lifes actions of their autonomy. In fact, if onehad to first accumulate endless good deeds, in the present life, one could only struggle to accu-

mulate good deeds in order to erase the evil ones, with no hope of achieving the possibility tovenerate God. However, the mention of the accumulation of good deeds is closely followed bythat of taking refuge, a juxtaposition which is present also elsewhere in Rmnuja. More explicit




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is a passage of Rmnujas commentary on the BhG, where the problem of who is able to startbhaktiyoga the path of devotion is dealt with. At the beginning of the passage, Arjuna is dejectedsince he understands that he will never be able to accomplish all the ritual duties needed to ex-piate his sins and will thus remain unworthy to start the path of devotion. Then, God drivesaway his sorrows by inviting Arjuna to abandon all duties and take refuge in Him alone:

There are sins, hoarded up since beginningless time, of various types, endless, [which are] obstacles to[your] undertakingbhaktiyoga. There are expiatory rites for each of these [actions] [], which are dif-cult to do for one such as you who has little time. [Therefore], renouncing all [these] ritual duties, inorder to succeed in beginningbhaktiyoga, take refuge in me alone. I [] will free you from all thosesins, which have been spoken of, which are obstacles to beginning thatbhaktitowards the essential na-ture. Do not grieve. (RmnujasBhs

yaon BhG 18.66, Shastri 1938, pp. 412413)6

This seems to mean that both performing the appropriate expiation rites and taking refuge inGod leads to having all ones sins deleted and being thus able to start venerating God. By con-trast, one who has neither taken refuge nor performed expiations will fall prey to his or her pre-

vious sins and not be able to start on the path of veneration. This also means that, theoretically,atheists could only regain the possibility to make autonomous decisions through the hard pathof the expiation rites. Either way, what appears to be self-evident is that one can autonomouslydecide to undertake expiation rites, turn to God as ones refuge or refrain from both. Althoughaccumulated sins may hinder ones actions, they do not hinder ones intentions.

Summing up, it seems that Rmnuja upheld at least phenomenologically a form of libertar-ianism (concerning will)-cum-determinism (concerning actions). Intentions need the support ofGod to be turned into actions but one can conceive independently the desire to take refuge inGod and this is the root of ones future attitudes and deeds.

3.3. POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS

Rmnujas concept of free will has been criticised not only by the opponents embedded in histexts, but also by modern scholars. Julius Lipner writes:

Similarly, says Rmnuja, when the nite agent performs a [moral] action the Lord as the agents innerentitative support consents to bring the action into existence, but he neither determines nor necessarilymorally approves of it. The indwelling Lord has regard to the act of will(prayatna udyoga) of the agentand consents to its realisation. This is a minimal form of consent, an ontologicalconsent, if you wish.The agent is morally responsible for the deed, not the Lord.

A little reection will show, of course, that this is hardly a resolution of our dilemma concerning theLords universal causality and the possibility of the nite free action. For is the agents act of willinthe rst place dependent upon the consent of the Lord or not? If it is, how is the agent really free toinitiate action? If it is not, the Lord is not the universal cause. (Lipner 1986, p. 71)

Martin Ganeri is more sympathetic towards Rmnujas position insofar as he indirectlyanswers to Lipner by turning the weak point Lipner highlighted into the pivotal element ofRmnujas theory:

In Rmnujas account, then, the nite self is free in that it can choose to act in different ways. It is not

free in the sense that either its power of agency or any of its actions are completely independent of theSupreme Self. [] Or, we might say, the nite self is free to act and its actions are free, not despite theagency of the Supreme Self, but because of it. (Ganeri 2014, p. 246)

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In other words, in regard to Rmnuja, the distinction between free will and free action,which has been deliberately neglected by some authors (see Meyers 2014), becomes greatly im-portant. For a similar view on how the will can be free although the actions and even thethoughts are not, see Albritton 2003.

4. Venkat

antha

In his Tattvamuktkalpa (henceforth TMK), Venkatantha presents an objector who states

that human effort is fruitless since what God wants to do He does no matter what, and whatHe does not want to be the case, will never be achieved, not even through major humanefforts.

Vekaantha answers by showing that the position of the objector is contradicted by his ownwords and deeds and points to the psychological undeniability of free will:

The one who says that all efforts are fruitless, why does he try to attack the one who says that they arefruitful? And why does he employ [his own] sentence about the fruitlessness? For which purpose doeshe run [towards something pleasant or away from something fearful] when he wants to eat or when he

is scared? (SS ad TMK 9)

His next and final argument has ethical import:

You cannot establish that your effort will be fruitless in regard to a certain part. Yet, thecontent [of the action you envision] has to be realised, [thus, you need to take care of it].(SS ad TMK 9)

4.1. KARMA AND PERSONAL AUTONOMY

In hisTtparyacandrik, Vekaantha quotes several passages to the effect that evil deeds needto be overcome before undertaking the path of devotion. But then he also states that this isimpossible. In a similar way, he explains that Arjunas grief (see Section 3.2) is due to the factthat he knows he will never be able to realise the many ritual performances he shouldperform.

However, the emphasis on seeking refuge as the only feasible path, does not mean forVenkat

antha that one should give up all sacrifices and just ask for Gods compassion. As seen

at the end of Section 4, one does not know Gods will and therefore it is better to try hard ineach case nonetheless. If God wants it, He will give one the power to accomplish what one

has undertaken, and He will not be offended if one tries and fails.Thus, ones inability to undertake the paths of ritual action, knowledge or devotion

(see Section 1.1), which may be due to ones karmic past, does not completely eliminatethe possibility to choose ones destiny. After all, one can still decide to surrender to Godand this will open a completely new path which ones past karmic traces cannot interferewith.

Nonetheless, Patricia Mumme has observed that in Venkatantha, the precinct of free will

has become smaller than in Rmnuja:

Venkatantha, on the other hand, while also afrming the freedom of the nite self, suggests more

strongly that the Supreme Self should be said to cause the initial choice and effect, in the sense thatthe Self is the common cause of all actions including the initial act of will and effort, with the nite selfthe cause of particular actions. (Mumme 1985, p. 107)




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5. Sudarana Sri

Sudarana Sri (also called Sudarancrya or Vedavysa Bhattrya, f l. 1290) wrote commentar-

ies on several works of Rmnuja. He is traditionally regarded as a much older contemporary ofVekaantha. In his commentary on the passage of RmnujasVedrthasangrahaquoted above(Section 3), Sudarana Sri asserts that God will not change His opinion concerning human

freedom:

Since the connection [of living beings] with the power to think is grounded in the xed will of theLord there is no obstacle to the xedness of it. (str1894, p. 140)

Next, Sudarana explains the compoundspower to thinkandpower to undertake actions,found also in the text by Rmnuja he is commenting upon (see above, Section 3):

The meaning is that He confers, in general to all conscious beings, the power to undertake or ceaseexternal [acts] and the power to know, to desire to act and to endeavour. [He does so] for the sake

of their autonomy. (str1894, p. 140)

Gods controlling power and the fact that it does not conf lict with free will, since it rathersupports it, is further elaborated on in the following passage, in which Sudarana explains againhow God does not interfere with ones initial intention but rather permits it. Sudarana alsobriefly hints at the ontological problem in the background, i.e., the relationship betweenGod and the world (the latter including conscious beings):

In this way, although [He uses] no specic way of control, it is well established that [God] is thesustainer and the one to whom everything relates, thus there is no diminishment to the fact that the

relationship between [God and everything else] is like the one between self and body. (str1894,p. 141)

To sum up, God does not interfere with ones initial decision to act. This does not mean thathe is unconcerned and away from each persons mind while they decide to act. In contrast, Godis always present within each human being, He is their inner ruler (antarymin, see Oberhammer1998) and cannot be separated from them (apr

thaksiddha). Consequently, Gods non-

interference with human decisions can only be interpreted as His free decision to do so.Succeedingly, during the actual action, He supports the human agents, who would otherwisebe powerless. It is, however, the human agent and not God, who is connected with the good

or evil final result, since she/he was autonomous in her/his initial decision to act (see above,Section 3.1).

6. Conclusion

Turning back to the controversy, discussed at the beginning, about the universality of the prob-lem of free will, the case of Viis

tdvaita Vednta shows that free will tends to emerge as a

problem whenever the contrast between a thick concept of the subjects agency opposes an-other force, and even more predictably if this contrasting force represents the will of anomnipotent God. One is reminded of Daya Krishnas stress on the fact that philosophical prob-lems are such only for a consciousness, so that universal problems become such when one starts

pondering them (Daya Krishna 1955, p. 217).More in detail, in the case of Viis

tdvaita Vednta, free will is considered as the pre-

condition of Vedic and Vaisnava ritual prescriptions, since prescriptions can only make sense

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if their addressee can choose to fulfil them. However, the Vaisnava-l_vr background suggests

that one would nonetheless most probably fail to stick to ones action, if it were not for Godssupporting them. This freedom of the will and neediness of the acts lead to the conclusion that,left to ones own devices, one will be unworthy of being saved. Thus, in Western terms,Viis

tdvaita Vednta authors faced at the same time the constraints of Luthers and of Erasmus

approaches. Their solution is, however, different.In fact, ones despair to achieve salvation will lead one to surrender. This is possible because,

given that human beings need Gods assistance toperformactions but not toconceivethem, one isfree to surrender. At this point, as explained by Rmnuja and Sudarana Sri, God can step inand lead ones actions according to ones good intentions.

From an ontological point of view, our being part of Gods body entails that we can act onlyaccording to His will, but this metaphysical background does not block the possibility to directones mind towards God. God controls our actions, not our wishes. And He does not controlthem, because He does not want to (see Section 5).

It remains open to question why this is so, but one might speculate that God wants to befreely loved and thus endowed human beings with enough free will to decide to turn towards

Him, although they still need His assistance to actually move towards Him.

Abbreviations

BhGBhagavadgtBSBrahmastrarBhrbhyaby RmnujaSSSarvrthasiddhi, Venkat

anthas autocommentary on the TMK

TMKTattvamuktkalpaby Venkatantha

Notes

*Correspondence address: Elisa Freschi, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History ofAsia, Apostelgasse 23, Wien, 1030, Austria. E-mail: [email protected]

1 The research for this article has beennanced through the FWF project M 1437.2 More on the Viis

tdvaita Vedntas understanding of Gods body in Freschi (forthcoming (b)) and McCrea (forthcoming (a)).

3 See Wegner (2002) and Libet (2004), and, for a different perspective, cf. Mele (2009).4 A similar selection of texts by Rmnuja is discussed also in Ganeri (2014). A more detailed analysis of this and the nextpassages by Rmnuja, Venkat

antha and Sudarana can be read in Freschi (forthcoming (a)).

5 Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own.6 This passage has been translated in Raman (2008, pp. 3839).

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