At many sūtras the Atlas shows an English line in each commentator’s section, and the lines usually differ. None of them is “the” Brahma Sūtra in English. Each is the sūtra as rendered in a specific published edition of that commentator’s work, and the Atlas preserves each edition’s own wording rather than fabricating a single merged translation that exists in no source.
The differences are informative. A translator rendering the sūtra for Śaṅkara’s commentary reflects how Śaṅkara construes it; the same for Rāmānuja and for Madhva. Even the parentheses differ, because each commentary supplies different unstated words. Two of the translators are one person: George Thibaut rendered both Śaṅkara’s and Rāmānuja’s editions, so where those two lines agree closely, that is partly the translator’s hand, not proof that the traditions read the sūtra identically. Madhva’s edition is S. Subba Rau’s 1904 translation, a different hand entirely. The full story of the editions lives in Sources & Bibliography.
