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


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Page 1352
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144
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
On this method of interpretation we find that the texts declaring the essential distinction and separation of nonsentient matter, sentient beings, and the Lord, and those declaring him to be the cause and the world to be the effect, and cause and effect to be identical, do not in any way conflict with other texts declaring that matter and souls form the body of the Lord, and that matter and souls in their causal condition are in a subtle state, not admitting of the distinction of names and forms while in their 'effected' gross state they are subject to that distinction. On the other hand, we do not see how there is any opening for theories maintaining the connexion of Brahman with Nescience, or distinctions in Brahman due to limiting adjuncts (upadhi)—such and similar doctrines rest on fallacious reasoning, and fatly contradict Scripture.
There is nothing contradictory in allowing that certain texts declare the essential distinction of matter, souls, and the Lord, and their mutual relation as modes and that to which the modes belong, and that other texts again represent them as standing in the relation of cause and effect, and teach cause and effect to be one. We may illustrate this by an analogous case from the Karmakanda. There six separate oblations to Agni, and so on, are enjoined by separate so-called originative injunctions; these are thereupon combined into two groups (viz. the new moon and the full-moon sacrifices) by a double clause referring to those groups, and finally a so-called injunction of qualification enjoins the entire sacrifice as something to be performed by persons entertaining a certain wish. In a similar way certain Vedanta-texts give instruction about matter, souls, and the Lord as separate entities (Perishable is the pradhana, imperishable and immortal Hara,' &c., Svet. Up. I, 10; and others); then other texts teach that matter and souls in all their different states constitute the body of the highest Person, while the latter is their Self (Whose body the earth is,' &c.); and finally another group of texts teaches—by means of words such as "Being,'
Brahman,' Self,' denoting the highest Self to which the body belongs—that the one highest Self in its causal and
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