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VEDANTA-SOTRAS.
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tion. But if you deny the pre-existence of the effect in the cause, it would have to be assumed that whenever the origination of a jar, for instance, is spoken of the agent is not the jar (which before its origination did not exist) but something else, and again that when the origination of the two halves of the jar is spoken of the agent is not the two halves but something else. From this it would follow that the sentence, 'the jar is originated,' means as much as 'the potter and the other (operative) causes are originated'.' But as a matter of fact the former sentence is never understood to mean the latter; and it is, moreover, known that at the time when the jar originates, the potter, &c. are already in existence. Let us then say, the opponent resumes, that origination is the connexion of the effect with the existence of its cause and its obtaining existence as a Self.-How, we ask in reply, can something which has not yet obtained existence enter into connexion with something else? A connexion is possible of two existing things only, not of one existing and one non-existing thing or of two non-existing things. To something non-existing which on that account is indefinable, it is moreover not possible to assign a limit as the opponent does when maintaining that the effect is non-existing before its origination; for experience teaches us that existing things only such as fields and houses have limits, but not non-existing things. If somebody should use, for instance, a phrase such as the following one, 'The son of a barren woman was king previously to the coronation of Pûrzavarman,' the declaration of a limit in time implied in that phrase does not in reality determine that the son of the barren woman, i.e. a mere non-entity, either was or is or will be king. If the son of a barren woman could become an existing thing subsequently to the activity of some causal
1 Every action, Sankâra says, requires an agent, i. e. a substrate in which the action takes place. If we deny that the jar exists in the clay even before it is actually originated, we lose the substrate for the action of origination, i. e. entering into existence (for the non-existing jar cannot be the substratum of any action), and have to assume, for that action, other substrates, such as the operative causes of the jar.
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