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I 22
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
the characteristic marks of abstinence from eating and of intelligence, implied in the words, 'The other looks on without eating,' that the highest Self is meant. In a subsequent mantra again the two are distinguished as the seer and the object of sight. 'Merged into the same tree (as it were into water) man grieves at his own impotence (anîsa), bewildered ; but when he sees the other Lord (îsa) contented and knows his glory, then his grief passes away.'
Another (commentator) gives a different interpretation of the mantra, 'Two birds inseparable,' &c. To that mantra, he says, the final decision of the present head of discussion does not apply, because it is differently interpreted in the Paingi-rahasya Brâhmana. According to the latter the being which eats the sweet fruit is the sattva; the other being which looks on without eating, the individual soul (gña); so that the two are the sattva and the individual soul (kshetragña). The objection that the word sattva might denote the individual soul, and the word kshetragña, the highest Self, is to be met by the remark that, in the first place, the words sattva and kshetragña have the settled meaning of internal organ and individual soul, and are, in the second place, expressly so interpreted there, (viz. in the Paingi-rahasya) * The sattva is that by means of which man sees dreams; the embodied one, the seer, is the kshetragña; the two are therefore the internal organ and the individual soul.' Nor does the mantra under discussion fall under the purvapaksha propounded above. For it does not aim at setting forth the embodied individual soul, in so far as it is characterised by the attributes connected with the transmigratory state, such as acting and enjoying ; but in so far rather as it transcends all attributes connected with the samsara and is of the nature of Brahman, i.e. is pure intelligence; as is evident from the clause, 'The other looks on without eating.' That agrees, moreover, with sruti and smriti passages, such as, “That art thou,' and 'Know me also to be the individual soul' (Bha. Gîtà XIII, 2). Only on such an explanation of the passage as the preceding one there is room for the declaration made in the concluding passage of the section, *These two are the sattva and the kshetragña; to him indeed
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