Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1913

I ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, 19.
183
that state, not of anything else. The ‘rising from the body' also can be predicated of the individual soul only whose abode the body is; just as air, &c., whose abode is the ether, are said to arise from the ether. And just as the word 'ether,' although in ordinary language not denoting the highest Lord, yet is admitted to denote him in such passages as, 'The ether is the revealer of forms and names,' because it there occurs in conjunction with qualities of the highest Lord, so it may likewise denote the individual soul. Hence the term 'the small ether' denotes in the passage under discussion the individual soul, on account of the reference to the other.'
Not so, we reply, 'on account of the impossibility. In the first place, the individual soul, which imagines itself to be limited by the internal organ and its other adjuncts, cannot be compared with the ether. And, in the second place, attributes such as freedom from evil, and the like, cannot be ascribed to a being which erroneously transfers to itself the attributes of its limiting adjuncts. This has already been set forth in the first Satra of the present adhikarana, and is again mentioned here in order to remove all doubt as to the soul being different from the highest Self. That the reference pointed out by the parvapakshin is not to the individual soul will, moreover, be shown in one of the next Satras (1, 3, 21).
19. If it be said that from the subsequent (chapter it appears that the individual soul is meant), (we point out that what is there referred to is) rather (the individual soul in so far) as its true nature has become manifest (i. e. as it is non-different from Brahman).
The doubt whether, on account of the reference to the other,' the individual soul might not possibly be meant, has been discarded on the ground of 'impossibility.' But, like à dead man on whom amrita has been sprinkled, that doubt rises again, drawing new strength from the subsequent chapter which treats of Pragåpati. For there he (Pragâpati)
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