Book Title: Satapatha Bramhana Part 05
Author(s): Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 1230
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22
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
The appearance of plurality is due to avidya. Falsehood' (mithyåtva) belongs to what admits of being terminated by the cognition of the real thing—such cognition being preceded by conscious activity (not by mere absence of consciousness or knowledge). The snake, e. g. which has for its substrate a rope or the like is false ; for it is due to an imperfection (dosha) that the snake is imagined in (or 'on') the rope. In the same way this entire world, with its distinctions of gods, men, animals, inanimate matter, and so on, is, owing to an imperfection, wrongly imagined in the highest Brahman whose substance is mere intelligence, and therefore is false in so far as it may be sublated by the cognition of the nature of the real Brahman. What constitutes that imperfection is beginningless Nescience (avidya), which, hiding the truth of things, gives rise to manifold illusions, and cannot be defined either as something that is or as something that is not.— By the Untrue they are hidden; of them which are true the Untrue is the covering' (Kh. Up. VIII, 3, 1); Know Måyå to be Prakriti, and the great Lord him who is associated with Måyå ' (Svet. Up. IV, 10); 'Indra appears manifold through the Måyås' (Bri. Up. II, 5, 19); "My Måyå is hard to overcome' (Bha. Gî. VII, 14); When the soul slumbering in beginningless Måyå awakes' (Gau. Kå. I, 16).—These and similar texts teach that it is through beginningless Mâyâ that to Brahman which truly is pure non-differenced intelligence its own nature hides itself, and that it sees diversity within itself. As has been said,
Because the Holy One is essentially of the nature of intelligence, the form of all, but not material; therefore know that all particular things like rocks, oceans, hills and so on, have proceeded from intelligencel. But when, on
In agreement with the use made of this passage by the Purvapakshin, vighầna must here be understood in the sense of avidya. Vignanasabdena vividham gñayate: neneti karanavyutpattyä -vidya sbhidhiyate. Sru. Pra.
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