Questions of King Milinda Part 02

Book Title: Questions of King Milinda Part 02
Author(s): T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford

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Page 1221
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208
VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
and air as known from other texts. For, as proved by us before, particulars mentioned in one scriptural text have to be combined with particulars mentioned in other texts, if only the chief subject of the passages is the same.-The details about the activity of the Self referred to by the pûrvapakshin have likewise to be understood in such a way as to agree with the general matter about which the text desires to make assertions. For we must by no means assume that the text is interested in setting forth all the details of the story on their own account; the knowledge of them would be in no way beneficial to man. The only thing the text really means to teach is the truth that Brahman is the Self of everything. Hence it first relates how the different worlds and the guardians of the worlds, viz. Agni and so on, were created; explains thereupon the origination of the organs and the body, their abode; and shows how the creator having thought, ' How can all this be without me?' (II, 4, 3, 4), entered into this body, 'Opening the suture of the skull he got in by that door' (7). Then again the text relates how the Self after having considered the activities of all the organs ('if speech names,' &c.; 6) asked himself the question, 'What am I?' and thereupon 'saw this person as the widely spread Brahman' (10). The aim of all which is to declare that Brahman is the universal Self. The same truth is inculcated in a subsequent passage also, viz. II, 6, 1,5; 6, where the text at first enumerates the whole aggregate of individual existences together with the elements, and then continues, 'All this is led by knowledge (i.e. the highest Self); it rests on knowledge. The world is led by knowledge, knowledge is its rest, knowledge is Brahman.' -For all these reasons the view that the highest Brahman is meant in the Aitareyaka is not open to any objections.
The two preceding Sutras may also be explained with reference to some other Vedic passages. We read in the Vagasaneyaka (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 7), 'Who is that Self?He who is within the heart, surrounded by the prânas, consisting of knowledge, the person of light.' Of the Self here first mentioned the text goes on to show that it is free from all contact and thus proves it to have Brahman
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