(Answer): The Vedantin does not hold that mere recollection is a pramana, a source of right knowledge. He only means that recollection (smriti) cannot be explained in the absence of a persistent Atman. Now, as to the origin of memory:

12. When a former experience has disappeared, its memory springs from a cause abiding in Atman and called samskara, the latent impression produced on the seat, of that experience

13. (This memory) gives us to understand that Atman is persistent, as being conscious of the object of a former experience after the immediate experience vanished away.

Atman, passing through an experience of the present moment, and remembering a former event in virtue of the, latent impression produced in him by the actual experience of that event, thinks thus "I who formerly ruled a kingdom, now lead, an ascetic on the banks of the Ganges." He is thus conscious of his personal identity as persisting through two different periods of time. So, too, remembering the events of former births, he recognises his personal identity through many births. Thus, as memory enters

as a factor into the process by which recognition of identity is produced, pratyabhijna has been spoken of as memory.

14. When the object has vanished away as also the experience thereof, the Divine Atman, never vanishing, never unconscious, recollects the object abiding in Himself.

The object has lain dissolved in Himself in the form of a samskara or latent impression.

15. It is the pramatris, the percipients, that become unconscious by the darkness of Maya. Illusion and Wisdom are the two potentialities of the Lord, like unto the sun's shade and light.

Atman is not unconscious even in sushupti. Though Atman does not manifest Himself in, any particular form in sushupti, He continues to shine by Himself, is self-conscious as before. It is the upadhis, buddhi, etc., which lie dormant

during sleep; so that the idea that Atman is during sleep is a mere illusion. This darkness of Maya, which has been as old as the universe, disappears on the dawn of the sun of wisdom. Both Maya and Vidya reside in the Lord as His saktis, or powers, like the shade and the light of the sun. They are the causes of bondage and liberation. They are said to abide in Atman as His saktis or powers, simply because He is conscious of bondage and liberation caused by them; not that they ever constitute the inherent nature of Atman, unattached and self-luminous as He always is. Neither can He be said to gain wisdom as though He had not possessed it before; for, He is never affected by Maya, any more than the sun is affected by the clouds. And, as in the case of the sun, it is a mere illusion to speak of Atman as distinct from His light.