After laying up all this in his heart, leaning upon the teaching of the great Upanishad, and finding the gloss on the Vedánta aphorisms by the venerated Bodháyanachárya too prolix, Rámánuja composed a commentary on the Śárírakamímánsá (or Vedánta theosophy). In this the sense of the first aphorism, "Then hence the absolute must be desired to be known," is given as follows:--The word _then_ in this aphorism means, after understanding the hitherto-current sacred rites. Thus the glossator writes: "After learning the sacred rites," he desires to know the absolute. The word _hence_ states the reason, viz., because one who has read the Veda and its appendages and understands its meaning is averse from sacred rites, their recompense being perishable. The wish to know the absolute springs up in one who longs for permanent liberation, as being the means of such liberation. By the word _absolute_ is designated the Supreme Spirit, from whom are essentially excluded all imperfections, who is of illimitable excellence, and of innumerable auspicious attributes. Since then the knowledge of sacred rites and the performance of those rites is mediately through engendering dispassionateness, and through putting away the defilement of the understanding, an instrument of the knowledge of the absolute; and knowledge of sacred rites and knowledge of the absolute being consequently cause and effect, the former and the latter Mímánsá constitute one system of institutes. On this account the glossator has described this system as one with the sixteenfold system of Jaimini. That the fruit of sacred rites is perishable, and that of the knowledge of the absolute imperishable, has been laid down in virtue of Vedic texts, such as: Scanning the spheres gained by rites, let him become passionless; Not wrought by the rite performed, accompanied with inference and disjunctive reasoning. Revelation, by censuring each when unaccompanied by the other, shows that it is knowledge together with works that is efficacious of emancipation, in the words: Blind darkness they enter who prefer illusion, and a greater darkness still do they enter who delight in knowledge only; knowledge and illusion, he who knows these both, he passing beyond death together with illusion, tastes immortality by knowledge. Conformably it is said in the Pañcharátra-rahasya-- "That ocean of compassion, the Lord, tender to his votaries, "For his worshipper's sake takes five embodiments upon him. "These are styled Adoration, Emanation, Manifestation, the Subtile, the Internal Controller, "Resorting whereto souls attain to successive stages of knowledge. "As a man's sins are worn away by each successive worship, "He becomes qualified for the worship of each next embodiment. "Thus day by day, according to religion, revealed and traditional, "By the aforesaid worship Vásudeva becomes propitious to mankind.