Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1867

I ADHYÂYA, 2 PÂDA, 21.
137
attribute belonging to the highest Lord only, since the attributes of knowing all and perceiving all cannot be predicated either of the non-intelligent pradhâna or the embodied soul whose power of sight is narrowed by its limiting conditions. To the objection that the qualities of knowing and perceiving all are, in the passage under discussion, attributed to that which is higher than the source of all beings—which latter is denoted by the term 'the Imperishable'-not to the source itself, we reply that this explanation is inadmissible because the source of all beings, which—in the clause, 'From the Indestructible everything here arises '-is designated as the material cause of all created beings, is later on spoken of as all-knowing, and again as the cause of all created beings, viz. in the passage (I, 1, 9), 'From him who knows all and perceives all, whose brooding consists of knowledge, from him is born that Brahman, name, form, and food. As therefore the Indestructible which forms the general topic of discussion is, owing to the identity of designation, recognised (as being referred to in the later passage also), we understand that it is the same Indestructible to which the attributes of knowing and perceiving all are ascribed. We further maintain that also the passage, Higher than the high Imperishable,' does not refer to any being different from the imperishable source of all beings which is the general topic of discussion. We conclude this from the circumstance that the passage, He truly told that knowledge of Brahman through which he knows the imperishable true person,' (I, 2, 13; which passage leads on to the passage about that which is higher than the Imperishable,) merely declares that the imperishable source of all beings, distinguished by invisibility and the like—which formed the subject of the preceding chapter-will be discussed. The reason why that imperishable source is called higher than the high Imperishable, we shall explain under the next Sútra.—Moreover, two kinds of knowledge are enjoined there (in the Upanishad), a lower and a higher one. Of the lower one it is said that it comprises the Rig-veda and so on, and then the text continues, The higher knowledge
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