Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 218

206
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1933
does not adhere to the soul."3 This need not be a wholesale condemnation of the fourth âśrama, but it clearly dispenses with it as a conditio sine qua non of liberation.
Ísávásyam may be either isa + vâsyam or isá + âvâsyam. In the former case the underlying root could only be vas" to put on, to wear (a garment)" and not vas "to dwell" which is intransitive and would require a locative (absent in our passage). Vasyam, again, cannot be a simple gerundive, because vas ácchâdane has no non-causal passive forms, but must be a gerundive of the causal; and thus isá vásyam idam sarvam could only mean "All this is to be clothed with God," i.e., by the imagination of the adept. However, vas âcchâdane, both with and without one of the dozen or so prepositions it may take, is conspicuous by its absence in the Upanisads where its meaning is always expressed by other verbs, such as paridha, ácchad, sampracchad. And so there remains as the most likely padaccheda îśá+ avâsyam and the meaning "to be inhabited by the Lord ", i.e., " to be looked at the Lord's abode ". The meaning would also result in the compound Isávásyam-isasyâvusayogyams. The pantheistic idea expressed here of God being in everything is of course well-known from innumerable passages (such as those on the antaryamin), while the more philosophical idea of the world being enveloped by, i.e., contained in God may be instanced by the phrase visvasyaikam pariveştitáram occurring thrice in Svetasvatara Up. and by the epithets viśvávása and jagannivása. That both ideas (sarvesu bhûteşu tişṭhan; átmani sarváni bhútáni) were perfectly familiar to the author of our Upanisad, is clear from his giving them side by side in stanza 5 (tad antar asya sarvasya tad u sarvasyasya bâhyataḥ), and once more in
stanza 6.
Stanza 3 is evidently directed against materialists and atheists. This stanza is connected, by way of contrast, with stanza 6 (note the tu). The intervening two stanzas (4 and 5), with other metres, are consequently quotations and may have been interpolated by a later hand.
One more quotation (but hardly interpolation) seems to be stanza 8, where the omission of one word (yathalathyataḥ) and the reading vyadhát (comp. paryagât) for the ill-suited imperfect vyadadhat would heal the metre, though merely as to the number of syllables. Here Sankara takes paryagât in the intransitive sense (samantad agát, ákâśavad vyâpity arthaḥ), and he declares sukram, etc., to be neuters (in the nominative) which, however, should be understood as masculines (!): "He (the atman mentioned in 7) is all-pervading, is the pure one. ... (he) the kavi . . . . has allotted. . . . ". A partial improvement on this interpretation is Râmacandra's who, while accepting paryaçât-jagad vyapyásít, takes
3 The word asti, though spoiling the metre, has a function here; it may but need not have crept into the text from a gloss.
Only with one of the prepositions upa, anu, adhi, á it becomes a transitive verb with its adhikarana in the accusative (Pânini I, 4, 48).-The Védic root vas "to shine" (comp. usas and, probably, vásudeva) with its causal vásayati and also the denominative vásayati "to perfume" (from vása "perfume") may be left out of account here. The latter would, indeed, give a good meaning (essentially agreeing with our own conclusion), but it is (as the doubtful form vásyanti, Keurika Up. 19) rather too late for our Upanisad.
5 Except vasita and vasitavya, which, however, occur in the epics only (see Whitney, "Roots").
6 Vaste being Atmanepada, its causal vdsuyati really means "to cause (somebody) to dress himself " and should, therefore, be expected to be construed like vaste, i.e., with the accusative of the thing to be put on (vastram vaste). But this construction is confined to its literal sense (as found, e.g., in Manu VIII, 396). More frequent, from Rgvedic times, is vásayati "to clothe with, to envelop in "(Atm.: "to clothe one's self") construed with the accusative of the direct and the instrumental of the remote object (see Petersburg Dictionary, s.v.).
7 Colonel Jacob's Concordance has for it the sole passage fédvdsyam which should not be there.
8 The verb duas occurs also in Chandogya Up. V, 10, 9 and, later than 16A Up., in Nâdabindu, etc. It has been recognized in our passage, so far as I know, only by Balakrsnadasa (a follower of Nimbarka). Other commentators speak, indeed, also of vasa nivase, but, instead of thinking of the preposition, give no further explanation or a forced one, e.g., by means of bahulaka.