Book Title: Grihya Sutras
Author(s): Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

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Page 2546
________________ II ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 29. 353 of a dreaming person, 'There are no chariots in that state, no horses, no roads, but he himself creates chariots, horses, and roads' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 10). In ordinary life too multiform creations, elephants, horses, and the like are seen to exist in gods, &c., and magicians without interfering with the unity of their being. Thus a multiform creation may exist in Brahman also, one as it is, without divesting it of its character of unity. 29. And because the objection (raised against our view) lies against his (the opponent's) view likewise. Those also who maintain that the world has sprung from the pradhâna implicitly teach that something not made up of parts, unlimited, devoid of sound and other qualities-viz. the pradhâna-is the cause of an effect-viz. the world-which is made up of parts, is limited and is characterised by the named qualities. Hence it follows from that doctrine also either that the pradhâna as not consisting of parts has to undergo a change in its entirety, or else that the view of its not consisting of parts has to be abandoned. But-it might be pleaded in favour of the Sankhyas-they do not maintain their pradhâna to be without parts; for they define it as the state of equilibrium of the three gunas, Goodness, Passion, and Darkness, so that the pradhâna forms a whole containing the three gunas as its parts. We reply that such a partiteness as is here proposed does not remove the objection in hand because still each of the three qualities is declared to be in itself without parts1. And each guna by itself assisted merely by the two other gunas constitutes the material cause of that part of the world which resembles it in its nature. So that the objection lies against the Sankhya So that if it undergoes modifications it must either change in its entirety, or else-against the assumption-consist of parts. 'The last clause precludes the justificatory remark that the stated difficulties can be avoided if we assume the three gunas ir combination only to undergo modification; if this were so the inequality of the different effects could not be accounted for. [34] . A a Digitized by Google

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