The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya / Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1

by Unknown

16. (He whose work is this is Brahman), because (the 'work') denotes the world.

In the Kaushîtaki-brâhmana, in the dialogue of Bâlâki and Ajàtasatru, we read, 'O Bâlâki, he who is the maker of those persons, he of whom this is the work, he alone is to be known' (Kau. Up. IV, 19). The question here arises whether what is here inculcated as the object of knowledge is the individual soul or the chief vital air or the highest Self.

The pûrvapakshin maintains that the vital air is meant. For, in the first place, he says, the clause 'of whom this is the work' points to the activity of motion, and that activity rests on the vital air. In the second place, we meet with the word 'prâna' in a complementary passage ('Then he becomes one with that prâna alone'), and that word is well known to denote the vital air. In the third place, prâna is the maker of all the persons, the person in the sun, the person in the moon, &c., who in the preceding part of the dialogue had been enumerated by Bâlâki; for that the sun and the other divinities are mere differentiations of prâna we know from another scriptural passage, viz. 'Who is that one god (in whom all the other gods are contained)? prâna and he is Brahman, and they call him That' (Bri. Up. III, 9, 9).—Or else, the pûrvapakshin continues, the passage under discussion represents the individual soul as the object of knowledge. For of the soul also it can be said that 'this is the work,' if we understand by 'this' all meritorious and non-meritorious actions; and the soul also, in so far as it is the enjoyer, can be viewed as the maker of the persons enumerated in so far as they are instrumental to the soul's fruition. The complementary passage, moreover, contains an inferential mark of the individual soul. For Ajâtasatru, in order to instruct Bâlâki about the 'maker of the persons' who had been proposed as the object of knowledge, calls a sleeping man by various names and convinces Bâlâki, by the circumstance that the sleeper does not hear his shouts, that the prâna and so on are not the enjoyers; he thereupon wakes the sleeping man by pushing him with his stick, and so makes Bâlâki comprehend that the being capable of fruition is the individual soul which is distinct from the prâna. A subsequent passage also contains an inferential mark of the individual soul, viz. 'And as the master feeds with his people, nay, as his people feed on the master, thus does this conscious Self feed with the other Selfs, thus those Selfs feed on the conscious Self' (Kau. Up. IV, 20). And as the individual soul is the support of the prâna, it may itself be called prâna.—We thus conclude that the passage under discussion refers either to the individual soul or to the chief vital air; but not to the Lord, of whom it contains no inferential marks whatever.

To this we make the following reply.—The Lord only can be the maker of the persons enumerated, on account of the force of the introductory part of the section. Bâlâki begins his colloquy with Ajâtasatru with the offer, 'Shall I tell you Brahman?' Thereupon he enumerates some individual souls residing in the sun, the moon, and so on, which participate in the sight of the secondary Brahman, and in the end becomes silent. Ajâtasatru then sets aside Bâlâki's doctrine as not referring to the chief Brahman—with the words, 'Vainly did you challenge me, saying, Shall I tell you Brahman,' &c.—and proposes the maker of all those individual souls as a new object of knowledge. If now that maker also were merely a soul participating in the sight of the secondary Brahman, the introductory statement which speaks of Brahman would be futile. Hence it follows that the highest Lord himself is meant.—None, moreover, but the highest Lord is capable of being the maker of all those persons as he only is absolutely independent.—Further, the clause 'of whom this is the work' does not refer either to the activity of motion nor to meritorious and non-meritorious actions; for neither of those two is the topic of discussion or has been mentioned previously. Nor can the term 'work' denote the enumerated persons, since the latter are mentioned separately—in the clause, 'He who is the maker of those persons'—and as inferential marks (viz. the neuter gender and the singular number of the word karman, work) contradict that assumption. Nor, again, can the term 'work' denote either the activity whose object the persons are, or the result of that activity, since those two are already implied in the mention of the agent (in the clause, 'He who is the maker'). Thus there remains no other alternative than to take the pronoun 'this' (in 'He of whom this is the work') as denoting the perceptible world and to understand the same world—as that which is made—by the term 'work.'—We may indeed admit that the world also is not the previous topic of discussion and has not been mentioned before; still, as no specification is mentioned, we conclude that the term 'work' has to be understood in a general sense, and thus denotes what first presents itself to the mind, viz. everything which exists in general. It is, moreover, not true that the world is not the previous topic of discussion; we are rather entitled to conclude from the circumstance that the various persons (in the sun, the moon, &c.) which constitute a part of the world had been specially mentioned before, that the passage in question is concerned with the whole world in general. The conjunction 'or' (in 'or he of whom,' &c.) is meant to exclude the idea of limited makership; so that the whole passage has to be interpreted as follows, 'He who is the maker of those persons forming a part of the world, or rather—to do away with this limitation—he of whom this entire world without any exception is the work.' The special mention made of the persons having been created has for its purpose to show that those persons whom Bâlâki had proclaimed to be Brahman are not Brahman. The passage therefore sets forth the maker of the world in a double aspect, at first as the creator of a special part of the world and thereupon as the creator of the whole remaining part of the world; a way of speaking analogous to such every-day forms of expression as, 'The wandering mendicants are to be fed, and then the brâhmanas[²⁴²].' And that the maker of the world is the highest Lord is affirmed in all Vedânta-texts.

17. If it be said that this is not so, on account of the inferential marks of the individual soul and the chief vital air; we reply that that has already been explained.

It remains for us to refute the objection that on account of the inferential marks of the individual soul and the chief vital air, which are met with in the complementary passage, either the one or the other must be meant in the passage under discussion, and not the highest Lord.—We therefore remark that that objection has already been disposed of under I, 1, 31. There it was shown that from an interpretation similar to the one here proposed by the pûrvapakshin there would result a threefold meditation one having Brahman for its object, a second one directed on the individual soul, and a third one connected with the chief vital air. Now the same result would present itself in our case, and that would be unacceptable as we must infer from the introductory as well as the concluding clauses, that the passage under discussion refers to Brahman. With reference to the introductory clause this has been already proved; that the concluding passage also refers to Brahman, we infer from the fact of there being stated in it a pre-eminently high reward, 'Warding off all evil he who knows this obtains pre-eminence among all beings, sovereignty, supremacy.'—But if this is so, the sense of the passage under discussion is already settled by the discussion of the passage about Pratardana (I, 1, 31); why, then, the present Sûtra?—No, we reply; the sense of our passage is not yet settled, since under I, 1, 31 it has not been proved that the clause, 'Or he whose work is this,' refers to Brahman. Hence there arises again, in connexion with the present passage, a doubt whether the individual soul and the chief vital air may not be meant, and that doubt has again to be refuted.—The word prâna occurs, moreover, in the sense of Brahman, so in the passage, 'The mind settles down on prâna' (Ch. Up. VI, 8, 2).—The inferential marks of the individual soul also have, on account of the introductory and concluding clauses referring to Brahman, to be explained so as not to give rise to any discrepancy.

18. But Jaimini thinks that (the reference to the individual soul) has another purport, on account of the question and answer; and thus some also (read in their text).

Whether the passage under discussion is concerned with the individual soul or with Brahman, is, in the opinion of the teacher Jaimini, no matter for dispute, since the reference to the individual soul has a different purport, i.e. aims at intimating Brahman. He founds this his opinion on a question and a reply met with in the text. After Ajâtasatru has taught Bâlâki, by waking the sleeping man, that the soul is different from the vital air, he asks the following question, 'Bâlâki, where did this person here sleep? Where was he? Whence came he thus back?' This question clearly refers to something different from the individual soul. And so likewise does the reply, 'When sleeping he sees no dream, then he becomes one with that prâna alone;' and, 'From that Self all prânas proceed, each towards its place, from the prânas the gods, from the gods the worlds.'—Now it is the general Vedânta doctrine that at the time of deep sleep the soul becomes one with the highest Brahman, and that from the highest Brahman the whole world proceeds, inclusive of prâna, and so on. When Scripture therefore represents as the object of knowledge that in which there takes place the deep sleep of the soul, characterised by absence of consciousness and utter tranquillity, i.e. a state devoid of all those specific cognitions which are produced by the limiting adjuncts of the soul, and from which the soul returns when the sleep is broken; we understand that the highest Self is meant.—Moreover, the Vâjasaneyisâkhâ, which likewise contains the colloquy of Bâlâki and Ajâtasatru, clearly refers to the individual soul by means of the term, 'the person consisting of cognition' (vijñânamaya), and distinguishes from it the highest Self ('Where was then the person consisting of cognition? and from whence did he thus come back?' Bri. Up. II, 1, 16); and later on, in the reply to the above question, declares that 'the person consisting of cognition lies in the ether within the heart.' Now we know that the word 'ether' may be used to denote the highest Self, as, for instance, in the passage about the small ether within the lotus of the heart (Ch. Up. VIII, 1, 1). Further on the Bri. Up. says, 'All the Selfs came forth from that Self;' by which statement of the coming forth of all the conditioned Selfs it intimates that the highest Self is the one general cause.—The doctrine conveyed by the rousing of the sleeping person, viz. that the individual soul is different from the vital air, furnishes at the same time a further argument against the opinion that the passage under discussion refers to the vital air.

19. (The Self to be seen, to be heard, &c. is the highest Self) on account of the connected meaning of the sentences.