Upnishad

SR No.: 007670
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 1835
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 35 MB

Page 406

III ADHYAYA, I.
293
THIRD ADHYAYA" 1. Pratardana, forsooth, the son of Divodása (king of Kâst), came by means of fighting and strength to the beloved abode of Indra. Indra said to him : Pratardana, let me give you a boon to choose.' And Pratardana answered: “Do you yourself choose that boon for me which you deem most beneficial for a man.' Indra said to him : 'No one who chooses, chooses for another; choose thyself.' Then Pratardana replied: Then that boon to choose is no boon for me.'
Then, however, Indra did not swerve from the truth, for Indra is truth. Indra said to him: 'Know me only; that is what I deem most beneficial for man, that he should know me. I slew the three-headed son of Tvashtri; I delivered the Arunmukhas, the devotees, to the wolves (sâlâvrika); breaking many treaties, I killed the people of Prahlada in heaven, the people of Puloma in the sky, the people of Kalakañga on earth ? And not one hair of me was harmed there. And he who knows me thus, by no deed of his is his life harmed, not by the murder of
1 The object now is to explain the true Brahma-vidya, while the first and second chapters are only introductory, treating of the worship of the couch (paryankopåsanâ) and of the worship of prâna.
• This refers to heroic deeds performed by Indra, as represented in the hymns of the Rig-veda. See Rig-veda V, 34, 4, and Sâyana's commentary; Ait. Brâhm. VII, 28. Weber, Indische Studien I, 410-418, has tried to discover an original physical meaning in the heroic deeds ascribed to Indra. A curious remark is made by the commentator, who says that the skulls of the Arunmukhas were turned into the thorns of the desert (karîra) which remain to this day,-a very common phase in popular tradition.
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