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


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Page 1686
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478
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
and hence possesses powers unfathomable by thought, is capable of creating this manifold world, although before creation he is one only and without parts. But the assumption of his having actually created the world would lay him open to the charge of partiality, in so far as the world contains beings of high, middle, and low station-gods, men, animals, immovable beings; and to that of cruelty, in so far as he would be instrumental in making his creatures experience pain of the most dreadful kind. The reply to this is not so, on account of there being regard'; i.e.'on account of the inequality of creation depending on the deeds of the intelligent beings, gods, and so on, about to be created.' Sruti and Smriti alike declare that the connexion of the individual souls with bodies of different kinds—divine, human, animal, and so on-depends on the karman of those souls ; compare 'He who performs good works becomes good, he who performs bad works becomes bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 5). In the same way the reverend Parasara declares that what causes the difference in nature and status between gods, men, and so on, is the power of the former deeds of the souls about to enter into a new creation
He (the Lord) is the operative cause only in the creation of new beings; the material cause is constituted by the potentialities of the beings to be created. The being to be embodied requires nothing but an operative cause; it is its own potentiality which leads its being into that condition of being (which it is to occupy in the new creation).' Potentiality here means karman.
35. If it be said not so, on account of non-distinction of deeds'; we say, 'not so, on account of beginninglessness'; this is reasonable, and it is also observed.
But before creation the individual souls do not exist; since Scripture teaches non-distinction 'Being only this was in the beginning.' And as then the souls do not exist, no karman can exist, and it cannot therefore be said that the inequality of creation depends on karman.--Of this objec
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