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II ADHYAYA, 4 pâda, 18.
581
tion of names and forms must be due to the same agent as the rendering tripartite, does not after all prove that the former is due to the highest Self. For the rendering tripartite may itself belong to the individual soul. For the text relates how, after the creation of the cosmic egg, a process of tripartition was going on among the individual living beings created by Brahmâ. 'Learn from me, my friend, how those three beings having reached man become tripartite, each of them. The earth when eaten is disposed of in three ways; its grossest portion becomes feces, its middle portion flesh, its subtlest portion mind,' and so on. Similarly, in the preceding section, it is described how the process of tripartition goes on in the case of fire, sun, moon, and lightning, which all belong to the world created by Brahmâ, 'the red colour of burning fire is the colour of fire,' &c. And the text moreover states the original tripartition to have taken place after the differentiation of names and forms: 'That divinity having entered into these three beings differentiated names and forms. Each of these (beings) it rendered tripartite.'-To this objection the next Sutra replies.
18. Flesh is of earthy nature; in the case of the two others also according to the text.
The view that the description of tripartition, given in the passage 'each of these he made tripartite,' refers to a time subsequent to the creation of the mundane egg and to the gods created by Brahmâ, cannot be upheld. For from it there would follow that, as in the passage 'earth when eaten is disposed of in three ways,' &c., flesh is declared to be more subtle than feces, and mind yet subtler, it would have to be assumed-in agreement with the nature of the causal substance that flesh is made of water and manas of fire'. And similarly we should have to assume that urine
I. e. if the tripartition of earth (i. e. solid food) when eaten, which is described in VI, 5, 1, were the same tripartition which is described in VI, 3, 3-4, we should have to conclude that the former tripartition consists, like the latter, in an admixture to earth of water and fire.
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