The Bengali brahmin Rammohun Roy (1772?-1833) was the first Indian to interpret Hindu texts from a standpoint affected by modern Western ideas, x His Ved~ntagrantha, published in Bengali in 1815, is the first work of his Calcutta period (1815-30, when tile bulk of his writing was published), his only previous extant work being the Tu.hfat al-Muwah.h.idfn (1803/4). It was his first publication based on the Ved~nta Sgtras, and was followed by the Bengali Ved~ntas~ra 2 (1815), which is a discussion of a small selection ofsfitras from the VS, and its English version Translation of an abridgement of the Vedant (1816). Besides these three works, Rammohun quoted from the VS frequently in his other Bengali and English writing.
The VS are the textual foundation of all the various schools of Vedfinta (the Advaita Vedanta of~aflkara, the Vi~ist~dvaita ofRfimfinuja, &c.). They deal with the interpretation of the Upanis.ads, especially the doctines connected with the key term Brahman; but they consist of a series ofnotes or headings, so brief that it is often impossible to say what Vedic text a particular sfitra refers to, what doctrine it derives from the text, or even whether it gives the sfitra writer's own view or a rival view which he proposes to refute. It is therefore impossible to translate or even to understand the VS without a commentary, and how we translate or understand them depends very much on which commentary we choose, since the commentaries frequently differ on the very questions we have just mentioned. Each commentary on the VS, on the other hand, contains much ofthe doctrine ofthe school to which it belongs, together with the texts and arguments on which those doctrines are based.
So much has been said about Rammohun as an innovator that it needs to be stated that when addressing a Hindu readership, as he did in his Bengali works, he presented his religion ofthe one true God as Advaita Vedfinta; not as a new form of Ved3.nta or even as a new form of Advaita, but as the very teaching ofthe Veda, the VS, and gafikara. Since he also held that this theistic religion was the only reasonable religion, he considered its doctrines to be the common basis of all religious, however much they were disguised therein by inessential additions. Addressing European readers, he described this religion as 'the rational worship of the God of nature, as enjoined in the Veds, and