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cxii
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
grahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects, and Vâgħavalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is overcome, is itself overcome by water; for death is fire. The colloquy then turns to what we must consider an altogether new topic, Årtabhaga asking, When this man (ayam purusha) dies, do the vital spirits depart from him or not?' and Yagñavalkya answering, 'No, they are gathered up in him ; he swells, he is inflated; inflated the dead (body) is lying.'—Now this is for Sankara an important passage, as we have already seen above (p. Ixxxi); for he employs it, in his comment on Ved.-sútra IV, 2, 13, for the purpose of proving that the passage Bri. Up. IV, 4,6 really means that the vital spirits do not, at the moment of death, depart from the true sage. Hence the present passage also must refer to him who possesses the highest knowledge; hence the 'ayam purusha' must be that man,' i.e. the man who possesses the highest knowledge, and the highest knowledge then must be found in the preceding clause which says that death itself may be conquered by water. But, as Råmânuga also remarks, neither does the context favour the assumption that the highest knowledge is referred to, nor do the words of section 11 contain any indication that what is meant is the merging of the Self of the true Sage in Brahman. With the interpretation given by Ramânuga himself, viz. that the prânas do not depart from the giva of the dying man, but accompany it into a new body, I can agree as little (although he no doubt rightly explains the 'ayam purusha' by 'man' in general), and am unable to see in the passage anything more than a crude attempt to account for the fact that a dead body appears swollen and inflated.-A little further on (section 13) Artabhaga asks what becomes of this man (ayam purusha) when his speech has entered into the fire, his breath into the air, his eye into the sun, &c. So much here is clear that we have no right to understand by the "ayam purusha' of section 13 anybody different from the "ayam purusha' of the two preceding sections; in spite of this Sankara-according to whose system the organs of the true sage do not enter into the elements, but are directly
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