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VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
'Capability,' on the other hand, depends on the possession of a body and sense-organs of whatever degree of tenuity; and that the devas, from Brahmâ downward, possess a body and sense-organs, is declared in all the Upanishads, in the chapters treating of creation and the chapters enjoining meditation. In the Khandogya, e. g. it is related how the highest Being having resolved on creation, evolved the aggregate of non-sentient matter with its different kinds, and then produced the fourfold multitude of living creatures, each having a material body corresponding to its karman, and a suitable name of its own. Similarly, all the other scriptural accounts of creation declare that there are four classes of creatures-devas, men, animals, and nonmoving beings, such as plants-and the difference of these classes depends on the individual Selfs being joined to various bodies capacitating them to experience the results of their works, each in that one of the fourteen worldsbeginning with the world of Brahma-which is the suitable place for retribution. For in themselves, apart from bodies, the individual Selfs are not distinguished as men, gods, and so on. In the same way the story of the devas and Asuras approaching Pragâpati with fuel in their hands, staying with him as pupils for thirty-two years, &c. (Kh. Up. VIII, 7 ff.), clearly shows that the devas possess bodies and sense-organs. Analogously, mantras and arthavadas, which are complementary to injunctions of works, contain unmistakeable references to the corporeal nature of the gods ('Indra holding in his hand the thunderbolt'; 'Indra lifted the thunderbolt,' &c.); and as the latter is not contradicted by any other means of proof it must be accepted on the authority stated. Nor can it be said that those mantras and arthavâdas are really meant to express something else (than those details mentioned above), in so far, namely, as they aim at proclaiming or glorifying the action with which they are connected; for those very details subserve the purpose of glorification, and so on, and without them glorification is not possible. For we praise or glorify a thing by declaring its qualities; if such qualities do not exist all glorification lapses. It cannot by any means be
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