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CATTLE, FIELD AND BARLEY
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not have to content ourselves with just this argument. There are some further ones: If what Patañjali wanted to say by bhakşayanti yavān balivardāḥ were that the oxen by eating the barley in the field commit an act of hiņsā to another person, i.e. 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 Patañjali had decided in favour of giving an example in which the real victim of the act of himsă 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 bhakşayati if used ahimsārtha on the one hand and himsārtha 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 Patañjali 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 ahimsā or that of himsā, viz. whether its object is a dead thing
