Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 1202

III ADHYÂYA, 3 PÂDA, 3.
189
for that number is not an essential part of the injunction', but merely makes an additional statement regarding something known already from the text, viz. the five fires with which the heavenly world and so on are identified %. Similarly nothing stands in the way of some additional qualification being included in the vidvà concerning the colloquy of the prânas and so on. The addition or omission of some particular qualification is unable to introduce difference into the object of knowledge and thereby into the knowledge itself: for although the obiects of knowledge may differ partly, yet their greater part and at the same time the knowing person are understood to be the same, Hence the vidyà also remains the same.
3. (The rite of carrying fire on the head is. an attribute) of the study of the Veda (of the Atharvanikas); because in the Samâkâra (it is mentioned) as being such. (This also follows) from the general subject-matter, and the limitation (of the rite to the Atharvanikas) is analogous to that of the libations.
With reference to the purvapakshin's averment that the rite of carrying fire on the head is connected with the vidya, of the followers of the Atharva-veda only, not with any other vidyâ, and that thereby the vidyâ of the Atharvanikas is separated from all other vidyas, the following remarks have to be made.—The rite of carrying fire on the head is an attribute not of the vidya, but merely of the study of the Veda on the part of the Åtharvanikas. This we infer from the circumstance that the Atharvanikas, in the book called
Samåkâra' which treats of Vedic observances, record the above rite also as being of such a nature, i.e. as constituting an attribute of the study of the Veda. At the close of the Upanishad moreover we have the following sentence, 'A
11.e. the Khandogya-text contains no injunction that five fires only are to be meditated upon.
So that there stands nothing in the way of our amplifying our meditation by the addition of a sixth fire.
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