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VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
asserted to be the best ('he is the best of us '). The assuming of the form of prâna has therefore, in accordance with the quoted passages, to be understood to mean that the energizing of speech and so on depends on the prâna, but not that they are identical with it.-Hence it follows that the word 'prâna' is applied to the sense-organs in a secondary sense. Thus Sruti also says, 'Thereupon they all assumed his form, and therefore they are called after him prânas;' a passage declaring that the word prâna, which properly refers to the chief prânza, is secondarily applied to the sense-organs also. Speech and the other sense-organs are therefore different in being from the prâna.
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20. But the fashioning of names and forms belongs to him who renders tripartite, on account of the teaching (of scripture).
In the chapter treating of the Being (sat), subsequently to the account of the creation of fire, water, and food (earth), the following statement is made, 'That divinity thought, let me now enter those three beings with this living Self (gîva âtmå), and let me then evolve names and forms 1 ;let me make each of these three tripartite' (Kh. Up. VI, 3, 2; 3). Here the doubt arises whether the agent in that evolution of names and forms is the gîva (the living, i. e. the individual Self or soul) or the highest Lord.-The pûrvapakshin maintains the former alternative, on account of the qualification contained in the words 'with this living Self.' The use of ordinary language does, in such phrases as 'Having entered the army of the enemy by means of a spy I count it,' attribute the counting of the army in which the spy is the real agent to the Self of the king who is the causal agent; which attribution is effected by means of the use of the first person, 'I count.' So here the sacred text attributes the evolving of names and forms-in which the giva is the real agent-to the Self of the divinity which is the causal agent; the attribution being effected by means
1 Literally, with this living Self having entered let me evolve, &c.
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| SR No. | 007682 |
| Book Title | Questions of King Milinda Part 02 |
| 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 |