Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 1042

II ADHYÂYA, 3 PÂDA, 17.
29
be taken in a secondary sense. What then is that thing to which those words apply in their primary sense, and with reference to which we can speak of a secondary sense ? They apply, we answer, to whatever moves and whatever does not move. The words birth' and death' have reference to the bodies of moving and non-moving beings; for such beings are born (produced) and die. To them the terms 'birth' and 'death' apply in their primary sense ; while they are used metaphorically only with reference to the soul dwelling in them. For their existence (i. e. their being used) depends on the existence of the body; i. e. the words 'birth' and 'death' are used where there take place the manifestation and disappearance of bodies, not where they are absent. For nobody ever observes a soul being born or dying, apart from its connexion with a body. That the words 'birth' and death' have reference to the conjunction with—and separation from a body merely, is also shown by the following passage : On being born that person assuming his body, &c.; when he passes out (of the body) and dies,' &c. (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 8). The gåta-ceremony also is to be viewed as having reference to the manifestation of the body only; for the soul is not manifested. Whether the individual soul is produced from the highest Self like ether, &c. or not, will be discussed in the next Sutra; the present Sutra merely states that the gross origination and dissolution which belong to the body do not affect the soul.
17. The (living) Self is not (produced) as there is no scriptural statement, and as it is eternal according to them (i. e. scriptural passages).
There is a Self called the living one (the individual soul), which rules the body and the senses, and is connected with the fruits of actions. With regard to that Self the conflict of scriptural passages suggests the doubt, whether it is produced from Brahman like ether and the other elements, or if, like Brahman itself, it is unproduced. Some scriptural passages, by comparing it to sparks proceeding from a fire and so on, intimate that the living soul is produced
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