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202
VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
The purvapakshin maintains that only the attributes actually stated are to be understood as referred to in each particular scriptural text.-But this view the Sûtrakâra discards by declaring that delight and all the other qualities which belong to the subject, i.e. Brahman, are all of them to be understood in each place. The reason for this conclusion is the one given in Sûtra 10. In all the passages treating of Brahman the subject to which the qualities belong is one, non-different; hence, as explained at length under the preceding Sutra, the qualities attributed to Brahman in any one place have to be combined wherever Brahman is spoken of.
But in that case also such qualities as having joy for its head, &c., would have to be ascribed to Brahman everywhere; for we read in the Taittirîyaka with reference to the Self consisting of Bliss, 'Joy is its head, satisfaction is its right arm, great satisfaction its left arm, bliss is its trunk, Brahman is its tail, its support' (II, 5).
To this objection the next Sûtra replies.
12. (Such qualities as) joy being its head and so on have no force (for other passages); for increase and decrease belong to plurality (only).
Attributes such as having joy for its head and so on, which are recorded in the Taittirîyaka, are not to be viewed as having force with regard to other passages treating of Brahman, because the successive terms, 'Joy,' 'Satisfaction,' 'Great Satisfaction,' 'Bliss,' indicate qualities possessing lower and higher degrees with regard to each other and to other enjoyers. Now for higher and lower degrees there is room only where there is plurality; and Brahman is without all plurality, as we know from many scriptural passages ('One only, without a Second').-Moreover, we have already demonstrated under I, 1, 12, that having joy for one's head and so on are qualities not of Brahman, but of the so-called involucrum of delight. And further, those qualities are attributed to the highest Brahman merely as means of fixing one's mind on it, not as themselves being objects of
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