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importance to him is the injury done to the plants considered as living beings; or to say it in other words, that one and the same situation of everyday life in a largely agricultural society based on keeping cattle as well as on cultivation of the soil, viz. damage to crops caused by cattle, is viewed in the former under its legal aspect only, whereas in the latter attention is focused solely on its ethical dimension. But it cannot be denied that this is again but an impression, and that therefore not much progress is achieved as against the stage that was reached already earlier in the course of the present study, viz. in § 3.2.
6.
On the other hand, some side issues could nevertheless be clarified, and the prospect is hence less gloomy than it might appear now that the discussion of Pan. 1. 4. 52, i.e. to be more precise the passage I 337. 25-27, is taken up again for a renewed examination; for that it is here and only here that the solution has to be sought, if it can be found at all, has in the meantime become too clear to allow anybody to still cherish illusions to the contrary. 6. 1.
In returning to this passage, it is not, however, as though we would have to simply repeat what was already stated above (§ 3), viz. that it is the first interpretation alone which allows of taking the grammatical object of the action of eating to denote at the same time that also which is actually injured; fortunately, we do
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not have to content ourselves with just this argument. There are some further ones: If what Patanjali wanted to say by bhakṣayanti yavan balivardaḥ were that the oxen by eating the barley in the field commit an act of himsă to another person, i.c. cause a material loss to the owner of the field-and likewise to the king, too,one could not but express one's astonishment at the absence of an expression denoting this person. It would be very strange indeed if Patanjali had decided in favour of giving an example in which the real victim of the act of himsa is not mentioned at all! This leads to a further observation of like importance, viz. that if this interpretation were correct, the difference drawn between the constructions of the verb bhakṣayati if used ahimsartha on the one hand and himsartha on the other, would become quite unintelligible; for one can harm somebody also by eating a ball of rice, provided it is his or meant for him etc.!
What all these arguments amount to is that the opposition in which the first two examples stand to the following ones becomes perfectly intelligible and at the same time plausible only if the correctness of the first interpretation is accepted. And it is then only that still another element of this opposition reveals itself, viz. that Patanjali deliberately chose examples belonging to the same sphere, i.e. that of cereal plants and certain products made of their grain; for he was thus able to bring out as clearly as possible what is of central importance for an action's falling under the category of ahimsa or that of himsă, viz. whether its object is a dead thing
