Footnote 200:[(return)]
In order to enable us to apprehend the sense from the word, there is required the actual consciousness of the last letter plus the impressions of the preceding letters; just as smoke enables us to infer the existence of fire only if we are actually conscious of the smoke. But that actual consciousness does not take place because the impressions are not objects of perceptive consciousness.
Footnote 201:[(return)]
'How should it be so?' i.e. it cannot be so; and on that account the differences apprehended do not belong to the letters themselves, but to the external conditions mentioned above.
Footnote 202:[(return)]
With 'or else' begins the exposition of the finally accepted theory as to the cause why the same letters are apprehended as different. Hitherto the cause had been found in the variety of the upâdhis of the letters. Now a new distinction is made between articulated letters and non-articulated tone.
Footnote 203:[(return)]
I.e. it is not directly one idea, for it has for its object more than one letter; but it may be called one in a secondary sense because it is based on the determinative knowledge that the letters, although more than one, express one sense only.
Footnote 204:[(return)]
Which circumstance proves that exalted knowledge appertains not only to Hiranyagarbha, but to many beings.
Footnote 205:[(return)]
Viz. naraka, the commentaries say.
Footnote 206:[(return)]
Asmin kalpe sarveshâm prâninâm dâhapâkaprakâsakârî yozyam agnir drisyate sozyam agnih pûrvasmin kalpe manushyah san devatvapadaprâpakam karmânushthâyâsmin kalpa etaj janma labdhavân atah pûrvasmin kalpe sa manushyo bhâvinîm samjñâm âsrityâgnir iti vyapadisyate.—Sâyana on the quoted passage.
Footnote 207:[(return)]
As, for instance, 'So long as Âditya rises in the east and sets in the west' (Ch. Up. III, 6, 4).
Footnote 208:[(return)]
Whence it follows that the devas are not personal beings, and therefore not qualified for the knowledge of Brahman.
Footnote 209:[(return)]
Yama, for instance, being ordinarily represented as a person with a staff in his hand, Varuna with a noose, Indra with a thunderbolt, &c. &c.