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DECEMBER 1928 )
KATHAKA UPANISAD
226
-buch ones, forsooth, are not obtainable by human beings. I 96 bestow them (upon thee); do thou play with them ! But, О Naciketas, ask not concerning dying." (25)
Naciketus : "Those, O God of Death, are ephemeral things'? which make blunt the keenness of all the senses. And is not all life very short ! To thee belong the chariots, to thee dance 98 and song.99 (26)
“Man cannot be satisfied by wealth only. Shall we get (real) wealth even if we have asked thee ?100 We shall live as long as thou shalt order. But this boon is just the one to be chosen by me. (27)
“What mortal man, himself growing old and well knowing his inferior position 101, having noted the undecaying age101 of the immortals, and meditating upon the illusions102 of beauty and sexual pleasure, could delight in an over-long life ? (28)
“That as to which people doubt, o Death, what happens at the great farewell103 tell us now. This wish goes deep into the secret ; Naciketas chooses none but this one." (29)
Vallt II. Yama: “One thing is spiritual welfare (śreyas), another thing is earthly pleasure (preyas); both of them, though of different aim, bind a man. Well (is it) with him who chooses spiritual welfare ; he who chooses earthly pleasure misses his sim 104 (1)
"Spiritual welfare and earthly pleasure alike come to man; the wise (man) takes good note of them and makes his choice. Verily, the wise man prefers spiritual welfare to earthly pleasure, but the dullard prefers earthly pleasure to (spiritual) well-being106. (2)
95 Mat is metrically superfluous, but cannot well be left out.
96 Paricdrayasva has been correctly explained by Kern, S.B., 1891, p. 86, with the aid of parallels from Buddhist literature. It means much more than have thyself attended with them' (Wh.) or by these be waited on' (Hume).
07 Sucbhdvd retained by Bohtlingk and Geldner, seems to me impossiblo in this passage, though the word occurs in Katyayana's Srauta S. xii, 6, 28. Goldner's translation : die neuen Morgen, o Tod, machen alt, etc., is masterly, but I fail to see how dvobhdud could really mean that. Thus I have reluctantly followed Whitney, Hillebrandt and the Poona ed. in reading fuo'bhdud.
98 Poley mentions & v. 2 nottagite.
99 All the translators seem to take these words to mean something like : 'thine be the vehicles, thine be dance and song!'. But that is scarcely the sense. Naciketas means that all this vanitas vanitatum belongs to the realm of the senses, the unreal world over which rules the God of Death (Antaka or Mrtyu).
100 I should prefer to read apraksma instead of adrakuma. This and the following verse are the answer to Yama's offer in v. 24 a-b.
101 Whitney seems to be the only translator who has recognised the real sense of this difficult verse. Though afruata is an eyópavor it can well be kept and makes good sense, though perhaps ajúryatd, as suggested by Wh. would be easier. The absurd-looking kevadha sthah (read kuvo) is a spontaneous formation from ku + adhahstha (Weber, Ind. Stud. ii, 196, n. adopts the v.l. adhasthak with disappearance of the Visarge, but that is scarcely necessary, cf. Wackernagel, Altind. Gr., i, 342 89.) The v.l. kva tadasthah reported by Samkara and adopted by Professor Geldner seems futile.
103 Kern, S.B. 1891, p. 86, takes vara to be = rupa, which seems correct. We must, however, read pramohan instead of pramodan.
108 Sampardya = moksa (thus, correctly, Raghavendra followed by Professor Geldner). 104 In the first líne te (Kern) and in the second bhavati should be rejected.
105 Curiously enough only Roth, S.B. 1891, p. 88, has seen the obvious parallelism which forons us to take yogaksema as = dreyas. Professor Geldner unnecessarily adopts the inferior v.l. yogakşemdr. In this same line Whitney correctly rejected (a)bhi before preyaso.
