§6.1 Vedānta-sūtra 1.1.4
The master sūtra that governs the entire hermeneutic architecture is Vedānta-sūtra 1.1.4:
"But that, because of consistent convergence."
The sūtra answers a specific objection. The Mīmāṁsaka position is that scripture is authoritative only where it enjoins action; statements of existing fact are either subordinate to an injunction or idle. Sūtra 1.1.4 rejects this: the Upaniṣads are authoritative as statements of fact about Brahman, because they converge on Brahman.
Samanvaya — sam (together) + anu (following) + aya (going) — is not an artificial synthesism that forces incompatible texts into a compromise. It is the property whereby many independent statements, read correctly, arrive at one place.
Why this is a real constraint and not a licence
It is tempting to read “everything converges on Viṣṇu” as permission to assert that any passage means Viṣṇu. It is the reverse. The rule says the corpus converges — which means an individual reading is now accountable to every other passage in the corpus. A reading that requires eleven other passages to be strained is worse than one that requires none, even if the first is more congenial. In practice this rules out far more readings than it permits, and Part III shows it doing so: in CF-04 and CF-07 the constraint blocks readings the tradition would have found comfortable.
§6.2 Vedānta-sūtra 1.4.28 and the names rule
The fourth pāda of the first adhyāya settles a series of disputed terms — avyakta, mahat, aja — that the Sāṅkhya reads as naming primordial matter. Having settled them one by one, the section closes with a generalisation, the doubled final word marking the end of the adhyāya:
"By this, all are explained — explained."
The sūtra is procedural: the reasoning just applied to these particular terms generalises. Where the context indicates the ultimate cause, terms that elsewhere name other things name Brahman here. Two guard conditions are built into it, and both are routinely dropped when the sūtra is quoted in popular argument.
- “By this” (etena) — the generalisation carries the reasoning of the preceding adhikaraṇas, not a blanket permission. To use 1.4.28 you must be able to run the argument the earlier sūtras ran: show that the term's ordinary referent cannot satisfy the predicates the passage attaches to it.
- Contextual restriction — only where the context points to the ultimate cause. Where it does not, the ordinary referent stands. Indra in a passage about rainfall is the deva Indra; the rule is not engaged (CF-01).
S3 is a stopping condition and it does real work. Most Vedic occurrences of most deity names pass S2 and stop there. The rule engages only at the minority of sites where the predicates overflow, and those sites are exactly the ones the case files of Part III examine. Skipping S3 is failure mode M03. A method that never stops is not a method, and the presence of this halt is what answers the unfalsifiability objection in §7.4.
§6.3 The corroborating śruti
Three passages are standardly adduced for the names rule. They are given here with their grading, because their status differs sharply and the difference matters.
"The existent is one; the wise speak of it in many ways — they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan."
"That goal which all the Vedas declare, and which all austerities proclaim — that."
"Him whom all names enter — Him indeed they declare to be the supreme Viṣṇu."
§6.4 Bhagavad-gītā 15.15 and vedaiś ca sarvaiḥ
The names rule is not an inference the tradition draws about the corpus from outside it. The corpus states it in the first person. This verse is the Grade-A anchor of the entire theory of names in §7, and it is the reason that theory does not rest on quarantined material.
"I am seated in everyone's heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge, and forgetfulness. By all the Vedas, I alone am to be known. Indeed, I am the compiler of Vedānta, and I am the knower of the Vedas."
Read the operative clause without softening: vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyaḥ — by all the Vedas, I alone am the object of knowledge. Both quantifiers are load-bearing. Sarvaiḥ refuses any partition of the corpus into a portion that is about Him and a portion that is about something else. Eva refuses any second ultimate object of knowledge standing alongside Him.
Chain the three sūtra-level statements and the result is not a devotional flourish but a closed argument: the corpus converges (VS 1.1.4); the convergence generalises to the disputed names (VS 1.4.28); the one existent is spoken of under many names (ṚV 1.164.46); and the referent of the whole is named in the first person (BG 15.15). Every link in that chain is Grade A. §7 supplies the semantic mechanism by which a corpus can be built that way, and §7.6 states the conclusion the chain reaches.