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III ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, 46.
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there takes place the mental offering of a Soma cup, all the rites connected with which are rehearsed in imagination only; the offering of that cup is thus really of the nature of thought only, but as it forms an auxiliary clement in an actual outward sacrificial performance it itself assumes the character of an action.
45. And on account of the transfer.
That the altar built of thought is an optional substitute for the altar built of bricks, and of the nature of an action, appears therefrom also that the clause of these each one is as great as that previous one,' explicitly transfers to the altars of mind, and so on, the powers of the previous altar made of bricks. All those altars thus having equal effects there is choice between them. The altars of mind, and so on, therefore are auxiliary members of the sacrificial performance which they help to accomplish, and hence themselves of the nature of action.- Against this view the next Satra declares itself.
46. But it is a meditation only, on account of assertion and what is seen.
The altars built of mind, and so on, are not of the nature of action, but of meditation only, i.e. they belong to a performance which is of the nature of meditation only. For this is what the text asserts, viz. in the clauses 'they are built of knowledge only,' and 'by knowledge they are built for him who thus knows.' As the energies of mind, speech, sight, and so on, cannot be piled up like bricks, it is indeed a matter of course that the so-called altars constructed of mind, and so on, can be mental constructions only; but the text in addition specially confirms this by declaring that those altars are elements in an activity of purely intellectual character, and hence themselves mere creatures of the intellect. Moreover there is seen in the text a performance consisting of thought only to which those fires stand in a subsidiary relation, 'by the mind they were established on hearths, by the mind they were built up, by the mind the Soma cups were drawn thereat;
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