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II ADHYAYA, 3 PÅDA, 49.
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particular body, pure or impure, whether of a Brahmana or Kshattriya or Vaisya or Sadra, and so on. As in the case of fire and so on. All fire is of the same kind, and yet one willingly fetches fire from the house of a Brahmana, while one shuns fire from a place where dead bodies are burnt. And from a Brahmana one accepts food without any objection, while one refuses food from a low person.
48. And on account of non-connectedness there is no confusion.
Although the souls, as being parts of Brahman and so on, are of essentially the same character, they are actually separate, for each of them is of atomic size and resides in a separate body. For this reason there is no confusion or mixing up of the individual spheres of enjoyment and experience. The Satrakära introduces this reference to an advantage of his own view of things, in order to intimate that the views of the soul being Brahman deluded or else Brahman affected by a limiting adjunct are on their part incapable of explaining how it is that the experiences of the individual Self and the highest Self, and of the several individual Selfs, are not mixed up.
But may not, on the view of the soul being Brahman deluded, the distinction of the several spheres of experience be explained by means of the difference of the limiting adjuncts presented by Nescience ?—This the next Satra negatives.
49. And it is a mere apparent argument.
The argumentation by which it is sought to prove that that being whose nature is constituted by absolutely uniform light, i.e. intelligence, is differentiated by limiting adjuncts which presuppose an obscuration of that essential nature, is a mere apparent (fallacious) one. For, as we have shown before, obscuration of the light of that which is nothing but light means destruction of that light.-If we accept as the reading of the Satra 'ábhasah' in plural) the meaning is that the various reasons set forth by the adherents of that doctrine are all of them fallacious. The 'and' of
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