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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
elements the whole mass of enjoying souls and objects of enjoyment which, during the pralaya state, had been merged in him so as to possess a separate existence (not actual but) potential only, and then emits the entire world just as it had been before, from the so-called Mahat down to the Brahman-egg, and Hiranyagarbha (Pragapati). Having thereupon manifested the Vedas in exactly the same order and arrangement they had had before, and having taught them to Hiranyagarbha, he entrusts to him the new creation of the different classes of beings, gods, and so on, just as it was before; and at the same time abides himself within the world so created as its inner Self and Ruler. This view of the process removes all difficulties. The superhuman origin and the eternity of the Veda really mean that intelligent agents having received in their minds an impression due to previous recitations of the Veda in a fixed order of words, chapters, and so on, remember and again recite it in that very same order of succession. This holds good both with regard to us men and to the highest Lord of all; there however is that difference between the two cases that the representations of the Veda which the supreme Person forms in his own mind are spontaneous, not dependent on an impression previously made.
To the question whence all this is known, the Satra replies from Scripture and Smriti.' The scriptural passage is 'He who first creates Brahma and delivers the Vedas to him' (Svet. Up. VI, 18). And as to Smriti we have the following statement in Manu, 'This universe existed in the shape of darkness, &c.--He desiring to produce beings of many kinds from his own body, first with a thought created the waters and placed his seed in them. That seed became a golden egg equal to the sun in brilliancy; in that he himself was born as Brahma, the progenitor of the whole world' (Manu I, 1,5; 8-9). To the same effect are the texts of the Paurånikas,' From the navel of the sleeping divinity there sprung up a lotus, and in that lotus there was born Brahmå fully knowing all Vedas and Vedängas. And then Brahmå was told by him (the highest Divinity),
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