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 1242

III ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, 27.
We there
instance, 'the flags are shaking' (dodhûyante). fore take the word in the same sense in the passages under discussion and understand by the 'trembling' of the good and evil deeds the fact of their not meeting, for a certain time, with their results.
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To this pûrvapaksha we make the following reply. The word 'shaking' has to be taken in the sense of 'getting rid of,' because it is supplemented by the statement of others obtaining the good and evil deeds. For those deeds cannot be obtained by others unless they are got rid of by their former owner. Hence although it is not easily imaginable that the deeds got rid of by one man should be obtained by others, we yet, on the ground of its being mentioned, may determine accordingly that 'shaking' means 'getting rid of. And although only in some passages the statement about the obtaining is actually found in proximity to the statement about the shaking, it yet has, on the ground of the latter, to be supplied everywhere and thus becomes a general reason of decision (viz. that 'shaking' means 'getting rid of'). Against the pûrvapakshin's view we further remark that good and evil deeds cannot be said to 'tremble' in the literal sense of the word, like flags in the wind, since they are not of substantial nature. (Nor must it be said that of the horse which exemplifies the shaking, the text only says that it shakes its hair, not that it casts anything off, for) the horse when shaking itself shakes off dust and also old hairs. And with that shaking (which at the same time is a shaking off) the text expressly compares the shaking (off) of evil.-Nor do we when assigning different meanings to one and the same root enter thereby into conflict with Smriti (grammar). The clause this has been stated' we have already explained.
27. At the (moment of) departing (he frees himself from his works), there being nothing to be reached (by him, on the way to Brahman, through those works); for thus others (declare, in their sacred texts).
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