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TATTVA-KAUMUDI
sovereignty'). This is what constitutes the inequality spoken of. The greatness of the magnificence of one man is a source of pain to another of lesser magnificence.
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(13) In the passage "Drinking Soma, we became immortal "-immortality stands for long-dura. tion,- -as is declared elsewhere: "Immortality is duration till the final dissolution of all finite existence." Hence the S'ruti: "Neither by deeds, nor by children nor by wealth, but by renunciation alone they got immortality." [Mahānārāyaṇa Upanışad X-5], and again 'Heaven shines in a remote and secluded valley, which the ascetics alone enter; by actions did the ascetics with children, desiring wealth, come by death; while those other wise sages, who were above all action, got immortality."
Immortality as a result of Vedic action is only long-durability
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is discriminative wisdom
(14) With all this in view it is declared: That which is contrary to that is preferable-proceeding The only means from discriminative knowledge of the Manifested, the Unmanifested and the Cogniser. The term that stands for the Vedic remedy of removing pain. A method-contrary to the impure Soma sacrifice etc. bringing about unequal and short-lived results, -is pure i. e. unmixed with the evils due to animal-slaughter and leading to results not unequal. This is clear from the S'ruti precluding all return to metempsychosis for people possessing discriminative knowledge. The argument based on the said result being a caused entity cannot be urged as a ground for its non-permanence, because this holds only in the case of the effect being a positive entity; in the present case, however, the effect-the removal of pain-though a product, is a negative entity. And when the productivity of the cause (ignorance) has been destroyed (by discriminative knowledge) there can be no further effect, in the shape of more pain. For it is a fact admitted on all hands that the efficiency of the
