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CHAPTER VII
BREATHINGS OF LIVING BEINGS
We all know that breathing is very important and essential for the sustenance of life. The present chapter VII describes the maximum interval possible between one breathing and another breathing of a living being belonging to different classes except the class of liberated ones. From the discussion one noteworthy fact emerges. Ac. Malayagiri draws our attention to it. It is this that the more is the misery a living being suffers from, the more is the number of breathings it performs. And the breathings of the most miserable living being are without any intervall. Conversely, more the happiness a living being experiences, much more is the interval between its one breathing and another breathing2. It is so because the activity of breathing itself is a kind of misery. This is a fact of experience and scriptures also corroborate it.
Ac. Malayagiri has arrived at a general rule on the basis of this discussion. The rule is that in connection with a living being belonging to the class of celestial beings the same is the number of fortnights intervening between its one breathing and another as is the number of sägaropamas its life-span consists of.3
In the text proper there occurs : ānamamti vā pānamamti va üsasamti va nisa samti vä". Āc. Malayagiri considers "ānamamti' and ūsasamti' to be synonyms. Again he regards panamamti' and 'nīsasaṁti' as synonyms. But he has recorded another view also. According to this other view, the first member of each pair (anamaṁti-ūsasamti, panamamti-nisasamti) refers to internal breathing whereas the second member of it refers to external breathing. Temporal Interval Between One Breathing And Another of a Living
Being Belonging To Different Classes Classes
Temporal Interval 1. Infernal beings Uninterrupted
Nil 2. Asurakumara
7 stoka (Min.) Somewhat more than
a fortnight (Max.)
De
1. "atiduhkhita hi nairayikāḥ, duḥkhitānāṁ ca nirantaram ucсhvāsanihívásau,
tathā loke darśanatl" Prajñāpanātikā, folio 220 B. 2. "sukhitānām ca yathottaran mahān ucсhvāsanihśvāsakriyāvirahakälah" Ibid
folio 221 A. 3. yatha yathā"yuşaḥ sāgaropamawrddhis tathā tathocchvāsanih svāsakriya
virahapramāṇasyāpi pakşavrddhih. 4. Prajñāpanātikā, folio 220 A. P. 20
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