Confluence of Opposites

SR No.: 006704
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain
Publication Year: 1921
Total Pages: 422
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 382

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For these men barter their nafs. The description of the cow is not answered by any other cow than the orphan's; for nafs is really not a member of the bovine class. The bodily man regards himself as entirely composed of blood, whence the colour of the orphan's cow, red, intensely red. We have it in the fifth book of Moses that the blood is the life (Deut, xii. 23).
RITUAL
Blood is also neither young nor old, but both youth and old age.
An ordinary cow could not surely help growing old between the death of the orphan's father and the attainment of manhood by him who was but a child at his father's death. And who would have paid three'pieces of gold for an untamed useless cow that had wandered all its days in a desert? The description, that it is not broken to plough the earth or water the field, is also very suggestive, showing that one need not look for the object to be sacrificed among the cattle that are employed in the plough or for the irrigation of fields. It not being the rule of practice for kine to be employed for the purpose of ploughing and irrigating fields, the negation of such employment is intended to exclude their tribe, the males of which (i. e., bullocks) are certainly employed in fields as well as for drawing water. The falling dead of the body after the 'miracle' is probably intended to signify the escape of the soul from its long-continued captivity when the body is left behind and the Spirit soars away upwards to nirvana.
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