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VEDÂNTA-SÚTRAS.
of the action-whether the heavenly world, or Release, or anything else. If a non-sentient thing were the agent, the injunction would not be addressed to another being (viz. to an intelligent being—to which it actually is addressed). The term 'sastra' (scriptural injunction) moreover comes from sas, to command, and commanding means impelling to action. But scriptural injunctions impel to action through giving rise to a certain conception (in the mind of the being addressed), and the non-sentient Pradhana cannot be made to conceive anything. Scripture therefore has a sense only, if we admit that none but the intelligent enjoyer of the fruit of the action is at the same time the agent. Thus the Pārva Mîmâmså declares 'the fruit of the injunction belongs to the agent' (III, 7, 18). The Parvapakshin had contended that the text 'if the slayer thinks, &c.,' proves the Self not to be the agent in the action of slaying: but what the text really means is only that the Self as being eternal cannot be killed. The text, from Smriti, which was alleged as proving that the gunas only possess active power, refers to the fact that in all activities lying within the sphere of the samsåra, the activity of the Self is due not to its own nature but to its contact with the different gunas. The activity of the gunas, therefore, must be viewed not as permanent, but occasional only. In the same sense Smriti says 'the reason is the connexion of the soul with the gunas, in its births, in good and evil wombs' (Bha. Gî. XIII, 21). Similarly it is said there (XVIII, 16) that'he who through an untrained understanding looks upon the isolated Self as an agent, that man of perverted mind does not see'; the meaning being that, since it appears from a previous passage that the activity of the Self depends on five factors (as enumerated in sl. 16), he who views the isolated Self to be an agent has no true insight.
34. On account of taking and the declaration as to its moving about.
The text beginning 'And as a great king,' &c., declares that the Self taking the pränas moves about in its own body,
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