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VEDÂNTA-SÚTRAS.
enters into the fire, breath into the air,' &c. (Bri. Up. III, 2, 13).-To this we reply that the objection is of no force on account of the metaphorical character of those statements. The entering of speech, &c., into Agni is metaphorical, because we observe no such entering in the case of the hairs of the head and body. For although the text says that 'the hairs of the body enter into the shrubs and the hairs of the head into the trees ; ' still we cannot understand this to mean that the hairs actually fly away from the body and enter into trees and shrubs. On the other hand, the soul could not go at all if we denied to it the limiting adjunct formed by the prânas, and without the latter it could not, in the new body, enter into the state of fruition. Besides, other passages distinctly declare that the prânas go with the soul.-From all this we conclude that the passage about speech, &c. entering into Agni, metaphorically expresses that Agni and the other divinities who act as guides of the prânas and co-operate with them stop their co-operation at the time of death.
5. If an objection be raised on the ground of (water) not being mentioned in the first fire, we refute it by remarking that just it (viz. water) (is meant), on the ground of fitness.
Well, the pūrvapakshin resumes, but how can it be ascertained that in the fifth oblation water is called man,' considering that water is not mentioned by scripture with reference to the first fire (altar)? For the text enumerates five fires—the first of which is the heavenly world—as the abodes of the five oblations. With reference to the first of those fires-introduced by the words 'The fire is that world, O Gautama,' it is stated that sraddhå (faith) is the material constituting the oblation on that altar the devas offer sraddha '); while nothing is said about water being the offered material. If, with reference to the four following fires, viz. Parganya, &c., water is assumed to constitute the offering, we have no objection because in the substances stated there as forming the oblations, viz. Soma, and so on, water may preponderate. But to set aside, in the case of
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