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150
BRIHADARANYAKA-UPANISHAD.
man? comes forth blood, as from a tree that is struck.
3. 'The lumps of his flesh are (in the tree) the layers of wood, the fibre is strong like the tendons 2. The bones are the (hard) wood within, the marrow is made like the marrow of the tree.
4. 'But, while the tree, when felled, grows up again more young from the root, from what root, tell me, does a mortal grow up, after he has been
felled by death? • 5. Do not say, “from seed,” for seed is produced
from the living o; but a tree, springing from a grain, clearly 4 rises again after death o.
6. 'If a tree is pulled up with the root, it will not grow again; from what root then, tell me, does a mortal grow up, after he has been felled by death ?
7. Once born, he is not born (again); for who should create him again?
1 In the Mâdhyandina-sâkhâ, p. 1080, tasmât tadâtunnât, instead of tasmât tadâtrinnât.
2 Sankara seems to have read snâvavat, instead of snäva tat sthiram, as we read in both Sâkhâs.
* Here the Mâdhyandinas (p. 1080) add, gâta eva na gâyate, ko nv enam ganayet punah, which the Kanvas place later.
* Instead of añgasâ, the Mâdhyandinas have anyatah.
• The Mâdhyandinas have dhânâruha u vai, which is better than iva vai, the iva being, according to Sankara's own confession, useless. The thread of the argument does not seem to have been clearly perceived by the commentators. What the poet wants to say is, that a man, struck down by death, does not come to life again from seed, because human seed comes from the living only, while trees, springing from grain, are seen to come to life after the tree (which yielded the grain or the seed) is dead. Pretya-sambhava, like pretya-bhâva, means life after death, and pretyasambhava, as an adjective, means coming to life after death.
* This line too is taken in a different sense by the commentator. According to him, it would mean: If you say, He has been born
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