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88
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
thing, in the highest worlds beyond which there are no other worlds that is the same light which is within man.' Here the doubt presents itself whether the word 'light' denotes the light of the sun and the like, or the highest Self. Under the preceding Satras we had shown that some words which ordinarily have different meanings yet in certain passages depote Brahman, since characteristic marks of the latter are mentioned. Here the question has to be discussed whether, in connexion with the passage quoted, characteristic marks of Brahman are mentioned or not.
The purvapakshin maintains that the word 'light' denotes nothing else but the light of the sun and the like, since that is the ordinary well-established meaning of the term. The common use of language, he says, teaches us that the two words 'light' and 'darkness' denote mutually opposite things, darkness being the term for whatever interferes with the function of the sense of sight, as, for instance, the gloom of the night, while sunshine and whatever else favours the action of the eye is called light. The word 'shines' also, which the text exhibits, is known ordinarily to refer to the sun and similar sources of light; while of Brahman, which is devoid of colour, it cannot be said, in the primary sense of the word, that it shines.' Further, the word gyotis inust here denote light because it is said to be bounded by the sky (that light which shines above this heaven'). For while it is impossible to consider the sky as being the boundary of Brahman, which is the Self of all and the source of all things movable or immovable, the sky may be looked upon as forming the boundary of light, which is a mere product and as such limited ; accordingly the text says, "the light beyond heaven.'—But light, although a mere product, is perceived everywhere; it would therefore be wrong to declare that it is bounded by the sky !-Well, then, the pûrvapakshin replies, let us assume that the light meant is the first-born (original) light which has not yet become tripartitel. This explanation again cannot be
II. e. which has not been mixed with water and earth, according to Kh. Up. VI, 3, 3. Before that mixture took place light was
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