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I ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 4.
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the benefit of man. Statements of accomplished matter of fact—such as 'a son is born to thee.' 'This is no snake'evidently have an aim, viz. in so far as they either give rise to joy or remove pain and fear.
Against this view the Porvapakshin now argues as follows. The Vedanta-texts do not impart knowledge of Brahman; for unless related to activity or the cessation of activity, Scripture would be unmeaning, devoid of all purpose. Perception and the other means of knowledge indeed have their aim and end in supplying knowledge of the nature of accomplished things and facts; Scripture, on the other hand, must be supposed to aim at some practical purpose. For neither in ordinary speech nor in the Veda do we ever observe the employment of sentences devoid of a practical purpose: the employment of sentences not having such a purpose is in fact impossible. And what constitutes such purpose is the attainment of a desired, or the avoidance of a non-desired object, to be effected by some action or abstention from action. "Let a man desirous of wealth attach himself to the court of a prince'; 'a man with a weak digestion must not drink much water'; 'let him who is desirous of the heavenly world offer sacrifices '; and so on. With regard to the assertion that such sentences also as refer to accomplished things—'a son is born to thee' and so onare connected with certain aims of man, viz. joy or the cessation of fear, we ask whether in such cases the attainment of man's purpose results from the thing or fact itself, as e. g. the birth of a son, or from the knowledge of that thing or fact.—You will reply that as a thing although actually existing is of no use to man as long as it is not known to him, man's purpose is accomplished by his knowledge of the thing. It then appears, we rejoin, that man's purpose is effected through mere knowledge, even if there is no actual thing; and from this it follows that Scripture, although connected with certain aims, is not a means of knowledge for the actual existence of things. In all cases, therefore, sentences have a practical purpose ; they determine either some form of activity or cessation from activity, or else some form of knowledge. No sentence,
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| SR No. | 007680 |
| Book Title | Satapatha Bramhana Part 05 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Julius Eggeling |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1900 |
| Total Pages | 2017 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 44 MB |