________________
CX
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
and there. This interpretation of the purport of the entire chapter is not impossibly right, although I am rather inclined to think that the chapter aims at setting forth in its earlier part the future of him who does not know Brahman at all, while the latter part of section 6 passes on to him who does know Brahinan (i.e. Brahman pure and simple, the text knowing of no distinction of the so-called lower and higher Brahman). In explaining section 6 Sankara lays stress upon the clause 'na tasya prâna utkrâmanti,'
his vital spirits do not pass out,' taking this to signify that the soul with the vital spirits does not move at all, and thus does not ascend to the world of Brahman; while the purport of the clause may simply be that the soul and vital spirits do not go anywhere else, i.e. do not enter a new body, but are united, somehow or other, with Brahman. On Sankara's interpretation there immediately. arises a new difficulty. In the slokas, quoted under sections 8 and 9, the description of the small old path which leads to the svargaloka and higher on clearly refers—as noticed already above to the path through the veins, primarily the sushumna, on which, according to so many other passages, the soul of the wise mounts upwards. But that path is, according to Sankara, followed by him only who has not risen above the lower knowledge, and yet the slokas have manifestly to be connected with what is said in the latter half of 6 about the owner of the para vidya. Hence Sankara sees himself driven to explain the slokas in 8 and 9 (of which a faithful translation is given in Professor Max Müller's version) as follows:
8. The subtle old path (i.e. the path of knowledge on which final release is reached; which path is subtle, i.e. difficult to know, and old, i.e. to be known from the eternal Veda) has been obtained and fully reached by me. On it the sages who know Brahman reach final release (svargalokasabdah samnihitaprakaranât mokshâbhidhảyakah).
9. On that path they say that there is white or blue or yellow or green or red (i. e. others maintain that the path to final release is, in accordance with the colour of the arteries, either white or blue, &c.; but that is false, for the
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