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250
SVETASVATARA-UPANISHAD.
parrot with red eyes, thou art the thunder-cloud, the seasons, the seas. Thou art without beginning, because thou art infinite, thou from whom all worlds are born.
52. There is one unborn being (female), red, white, and black, uniform, but producing manifold offspring. There is one unborn being (male) who loves her and lies by her; there is another who leaves her, while she is eating what has to be eaten.
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1 We see throughout the constant change from the masculine to the neuter gender, in addressing either the lord or his true essence.
This is again one of the famous verses of our Upanishad, because it formed for a long time a bone of contention between Vedânta and Sankhya philosophers. The Sânkhyas admit two principles, the Purusha, the absolute subject, and the Prakriti, generally translated by nature. The Vedânta philosophers admit nothing but the one absolute subject, and look upon nature as due to a power inherent in that subject. The later Sânkhyas therefore, who are as anxious as the Vedântins to find authoritative passages in the Veda, confirming their opinions, appeal to this and other passages, to show that their view of Prakriti, as an independent power, is supported by the Veda. The whole question is fully discussed in the Vedânta-sútras I, 4, 8. Here we read rohitakrishna-suklâm, which seems preferable to lohita-krishna-varnâm, at least from a Vedânta point of view, for the three colours, red, black, and white, are explained as signifying either the three gunas, ragas, sattva, and tamas, or better (Khând. Up. VI, 3, 1), the three elements, tegas (fire), ap (water), and anna (earth). A. reads rohitasuklakrishnâm; B. lohitasuklakrishna (sic). We also find in A. and B. bhuktabhogam for bhuktabhogyâm, but the latter seems technically the more correct reading. It would be quite wrong to imagine that aga and agâ are meant here for he-goat and she-goat. These words, in the sense of unborn, are recognised as early as the hymns of the Rig-veda, and they occurred in our Upanishad I, 9, where the two agas are mentioned in the same sense as here. But there is no doubt, a play on the words, and the poet wished to convey the second meaning of he-goat and she-goat, only not as the primary, but as the secondary intention.
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