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


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Page 1540
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332
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS..
those very same characteristics ; just as the potter fashions a new jar, on the basis of the word 'jar' which is stirring in his mind.-But how is this known - Through perception and inference,' i.e. through Scripture and Smriti. Scripture says, e.g. By means of the Veda Pragâpati evolved names and forms, the being and the non-being'; and Saying “bhdh" (earth) he created the earth; saying " bhuvah" he created the air, and so on; which passages teach that the creator at first bethinks himself of the characteristic make of a thing, in connexion with the word denoting it, and thereupon creates an individual thing characterised by that make. Smriti makes similar statements; compare, e.g.
In the beginning there was sent forth by the creator, divine speech-beginningless and endless—in the form of the Veda, and from it there originated all creatures'; and 'He, in the beginning, separately created from the words of the Veda the names and works and shapes of all things'; and 'The names and forms of beings, and all the multiplicity of works He in the beginning created from the Veda.' This proves that from the corporeality of the gods, and so on, it follows neither that the words of the Veda are unmeaning nor that the Veda itself is non-eternal.
28. And for this very reason eternity (of the Veda).
As words such as Indra and Vasishtha, which denote gods and Rishis, denote (not individuals only, but) classes, and as the creation of those beings is preceded by their being suggested to the creative mind through those words; for this reason the eternity of the Veda admits of being reconciled with what scripture says about the mantras and kändas (sections) of the sacred text having 'makers' and about Rishis seeing the hymns; cp. such passages as
He chooses the makers of mantras'; 'Reverence to the Rishis who are the makers of mantras'; That is Agni; this is a hymn of Visvâmitra. For by means of these very texts Pragàpati presents to his own mind the characteristics and powers of the different Rishis who make the different sections, hymns, and mantras, thereupon creates them endowed with those characteristics and powers, and appoints
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