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II ADHYÂYA, I PÂDA, 37.
361
trine of the world having a beginning-we are led into a logical sce-saw. The opposite doctrine, on the other hand, explains all matters in a manner analogous to the case of the seed and sprout, so that no difficulty remains.-Moreover, the fact of the world being without a beginning, is seen in Sruti and Smriti. In the first place, we have the scriptural passage, 'Let me enter with this living Self (giva),' &c. (Kh. Up. VI, 3, 2). Here the circumstance of the embodied Self (the individual soul) being called, previously to creation, the living Self'- a name applying to it in so far as it is the sustaining principle of the prânas -- shows that this phenomenal world is without a beginning. For if it had a beginning, the prânas would not exist before that beginning, and how then could the embodied Self be denoted, with reference to the time of the world's beginning, by a name which depends on the existence of those prânas? Nor can it be said that it is so designated with a view to its future relation to the pranas; it being a settled principle that a past relation, as being already existing, is of greater force than a mere future relation.-Moreover, we have the mantra, As the creator formerly devised (akalpayat) sun and moon' (Ri. Samh. X, IGO, 3), which intimates the existence of former Kalpas. Smriti also declares the world to be without a beginning, Neither its form is known here, nor its end, nor its beginning, nor its support' (Bha. Gi. XV. 3). And the Purâna also declares that there is no measure of the past and the future Kalpas.
37. And because all the qualities (required in the cause of the world) are present (in Brahman).
The teacher has now refuted all the objections, such as difference of character, and the like, which other teachers have brought forward against what he had established as the real sense of the Veda, viz. that the intelligent Brahman is the cause and matter of this world.
Now, before entering on a new chapter, whosc chief aim it will be to refute the (positive) opinions held by other teachers, he sums up the foregoing chapter, the purport of which
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