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conclusion, asks what kind of utterance people make by saying 'We shall lie down.' This very loose concatenation of topics sets in at the very beginning of the Viy. without a plan or, in fact, an introduction. Unlike Angas 1-4 and 6 seqq. Anga 5, as a matter of fact, plunges the reader in medias res 11 with Goy. questioning the Master on the famous tenet of the identity of the action that is being performed and the performed action (I 11). This tenet has nothing to do with the theories of attraction of matter etc. immediately following its enunciation (I 12) but, on the other hand, will again turn up for discussion under totally different circumstances in I 61, 73, 82h, 101, VIII 63, -1, IX 332d and XVI 5b-c. Probably the antique character and the importance of this tenet are the reasons why it was chosen as an appropriate exordium of the whole work.
Of course this utter incoherence from the subject-matter point of view will be one of the main problems to be dealt with in trying to elucidate the composition of the nucleus of the Viy. Before we can tackle it, though, we shall first have to consider the more urgent question posed by the equally great diversity of what one might call the various styles or patterns in which the teachings are set forth: dialogues and detached statements of the common question-and-answer type (Mv. and Goy. being the interlocutors or not), conversion stories and episodes of various kinds, refutations of heterodox views and, finally, references to and quotations from other works, among the latter also a few non-dialogue texts. In the following paragraphs we will examine these different patterns one by one. We shall, however, soon find that no strict dividing lines can be drawn between them because they overlap in many ways: what seems to be a common dialogue for instance may prove to refer to a nondialogue text in some other work, one conversion story contains a refutation of dissident views etc.
§ 9. References. Let us then start with the group of texts that, from the very outset, strikes us as the most heterogeneous of all, viz the references.
11 If we drop the obviously younger namaskāras and the solemn clothing of Goy.'s first question.
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