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III ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, 51.
DA, 51.
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attained through the brick-altar in connexion with its own sacrificial performance is also attained through the altar of mind in connexion with the meditational performance into which it enters.
50. And by a subsequent (Brâhmana) also the being of such a kind of the word (is proved). But the connexion is on account of plurality.
The subsequent Brahmana (Sat. Br. X, 5, 4) also proves that the text treating of the altars made of mind, and so on, enjoins a meditation only. For that Brahmana (which begins .This brick-built fire-altar is this world; the waters are its enclosing-stones,' &c.) declares further on 'whosoever knows this thus comes to be that whole Agni who is the space-filler,' and from this it appears that what is enjoined there is a meditation with a special result of its own. And further on (X, 6) there is another meditation enjoined, viz. one on Vaisvånara. All this shows that the Agnirahasya book (Sat. Br. X) is not solely concerned with the injunction of outward sacrificial acts. But what then is the reason that such matters as the mental (meditative) construction of fire-altars which ought to be included in the Brihad-aranyaka are included in the Agnirahasya ?_*That connexion is on account of plurality,' i. e. the altars made of mind, and so on, are, in the sacred text, dealt with in proximity to the real altar made of bricks, because so many details of the latter are mentally to be accomplished in the meditation.—Here terminates the adhikarana of option with the previous one.'
51. Some, on account of the existence of a Self within a body.
In all meditations on the highest Self the nature of the meditating subject has to be ascertained no lesș than the nature of the object of meditation and of the mode of meditation. The question then arises whether the meditating Self is to be viewed as the knowing, doing, and enjoying Self, subject to transmigration; or as that Self which Pragåpati describes (Kh. Up. VIII, 1), viz. a Self [48]
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