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VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS.
bute of blueness, &c., as known from the ordinary use of language, is connected with some other matter. When, e.g., somebody says 'bring the blue lotus,' a thing is brought which possesses the attribute of blueness. And when we are told that 'a herd of elephants excited with passion lives in the Vindhya-forest,' we again understand that what is meant is something possessing several attributes denoted by several words. Analogously we have to understand, as the thing intimated by Vedanta-texts in the form of coordination, Brahman as possessing such and such attributes. --It is an error to assume that, where a sentence aims at setting forth attributes, one attribute is to be taken as qualifying the thing in so far as qualified by another attribute; the case rather is that the thing itself is equally qualified by all attributes. For co-ordination means the application, to one thing, of several words having different reasons of application; and the effect of co-ordination is that one and the same thing, because being connected positively or negatively-with some attribute other than that which is conveyed by one word, is also known through other words. As e. g. when it is said that 'Devadatta (is) dark-complexioned, young, reddish-eyed, not stupid, not poor, of irreproachable character.' Where two co-ordinate words express two attributes which cannot exist combined in one thing, one of the two words is to be taken in a secondary sense, while the other retains its primary meaning, as e. g. in the case of the sentence, The Vahika man is an ox. But in the case of the 'blue lotus' and the like, where there is nothing contradictory in the connexion of the two attributes with one thing, co-ordination expresses the fact of one thing being characterised by two attributes. - Possibly our opponent will here make the following remark. A thing in so far as defined by its correlation to some one attribute is something different from the thing in so far as defined by its correlation to some second attribute ; hence, even if there is equality of case affixes (as in
nilam utpalam'), the words co-ordinated are incapable of expressing oneness, and cannot, therefore, express the oneness of a thing qualified by several attributes; not any
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