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666
VEDANTA-SÛTRAS.
stituted can be comprised in one meditation, there is no need of repeating the meditation on account of the qualities. -This view the Sûtra sets aside. The meditation has to be repeated. The highest Self indeed is that being to which alone freedom from evil and the other qualities belong, and it forms the object of the first meditation; yet there is a difference between it as viewed in its essential being and as viewed as possessing those qualities; and moreover, the clause free from evil, from old age,' &c. enjoins a meditation on the Self as possessing those qualities. It is therefore first to be meditated on in its essential nature, and then there takes place a repetition of the meditation on it in order to bring in those special qualities. The case is analogous to that of 'the offerings.' There is a text 'He is to offer a purodâsa on eleven potsherds to Indra the ruler, to Indra the supreme ruler, to Indra the self-ruler.' This injunction refers to one and the same Indra, possessing the qualities of rulership and so on; but as, through connexion with those several qualities, the aspects of Indra differ, the oblation of the purodâsa has to be repeated. This is declared in the Sânkarshana, 'The divinities are different on account of separation.'-Here terminates the adhikarana of 'offerings.'
43. On account of the plurality of indicatory marks; for that (proof) is stronger. This also is declared (in the Pârva Mimâmsâ).
The Taittirîyaka contains another daharavidyâ, 'The thousand-headed god, the all-eyed one,' &c. (Mahanâr. Up. XI). Here the doubt arises whether this vidyâ, as being one with the previously introduced vidya, states qualities to be included in the meditation enjoined in that vidyâ, or qualities to be included in the meditations on the highest Self as enjoined in all the Vedanta-texts.-The former is the case, the Pûrvapakshin holds, on account of the leading subject-matter. For in the preceding section (X) the meditation on the small ether is introduced as the subject-matter. 'There is the small lotus placed in the middle of the town (of the body), free from all evil, the abode
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