The Brahma Sutra · Book 3: Sadhana · Pada 3 · The unity of the Upanishadic vidyas

The third pada turns from Brahman to the vidyas, the meditations the Upanishads teach, and asks whether a vidya that several shakhas record, the prana-vidya of the Chandogya, the Brihadaranyaka and the Kaushitaki, the five fires, the Vaishvanara, is one vidya told several times or a separate vidya in each. Shankara clears the ground first: about the attributeless Brahman, one and uniform like a lump of salt, the question cannot even arise, since a knowledge that differed from its object would be a mistake; the question concerns the qualified Brahman and prana and the rest, whose meditations, like rites, have fruits of their own, seen and unseen, and in some cases release by stages.

The opponent argues from the Mimamsa rules that separate rites: difference of name, since the vidyas go under the names Taittiriyaka, Vajasaneyaka, Kauthumaka, Kaushitaka; difference of form, since one shakha counts six fires where another counts five, and the prana colloquies list more organs or fewer; and difference of dharma, since the Mundaka alone makes the vow of carrying fire on the head a condition of the teaching (3.2.10). 3.3.1 answers: what all the Vedanta texts teach is one, because injunction and the rest do not differ. As the agnihotra read in many shakhas is one rite, enjoined everywhere by “he is to offer,” so “he who knows the oldest and best” (Brihadaranyaka 6.1.1) and “he who knows the first and best” (Chandogya 5.1.1) enjoin one meditation, with one aim, “he becomes the first and best among his people,” one form, the prana with those qualities, and one name, the prana-vidya; the five fires, the Vaishvanara and the Shandilya are decided the same way.

3.3.2: the differences of detail prove nothing, since such differences occur within one vidya; the five fires that begin with heaven are the same in both texts, the Chandogya itself mentions a sixth fire when the friends carry the dead man to it (5.9.2), the Vajasaneyins add theirs only to close off the fancy of fuel and smoke, and the number “five” is a statement about something known and no part of the injunction; where the greater part of the object and the knower are the same, the vidya is the same. 3.3.3: the vow of the head belongs to the study of the Atharvanas’ Veda, since their book of observances lists it as such, and the Upanishad’s “a man who has not kept the vow does not read this” speaks of reading; and the limit holds as it does for the seven sava offerings, which are tied to the one fire of the Atharvan and so bind the Atharvanas alone. 3.3.4: and scripture shows the unity, “the word all the Vedas record” (Katha 1.2.15), “him the Bahvrichas consider in the great hymn, the Adhvaryus in the fire, the Chhandogas in the Mahavrata” (Aitareya Aranyaka 3.2.3.12), and the Chandogya’s “that Vaishvanara Self which is a span long” (5.18.1), spoken of as a thing already known from the Vajasaneyaka.

A vidya recorded under one name in several shakhas is one vidya, and what one branch says about it holds for the others. The rest of the pada works out when that rule applies and when the vidyas are separate after all.

The practical outcome of the first four sutras. 3.3.5: where a meditation is common to several shakhas, the particulars named in one are gathered into the others, since the thing meant does not differ, as the subsidiary rites of one sacrifice are gathered from all the texts that mention them. The agnihotra is one, so its details, wherever recorded, make one whole; if the vidyas were separate the details could not cross, each being shut in its own text, and since they are one, they do. How the rule works, and where it stops, the sutras from 3.3.10 onward show.

Two udgitha vidyas tell the same story. Brihadaranyaka 1.3: the gods, at war with the demons, say to speech, “sing the udgitha for us”; speech and each organ in turn are pierced with evil, until the breath in the mouth sings and the demons are scattered like a clod against a stone. Chandogya 1.2 has the gods take up the udgitha, the organs fail the same way, and “this chief breath they meditated on as the udgitha.” One vidya or two? The opponent says one, by the first adhikarana’s rule: both glorify the chief prana, both tell of gods and demons, both move from the failing organs to breath, both end with the demons scattered; that one text makes prana the singer and the other makes it the udgitha is too small a difference to split them, and the Brihadaranyaka too says “he is the udgitha” (1.3.23). 3.3.6 states that case: the difference is only in the words, since the thing does not differ.

3.3.7 answers: no, they are separate, because the subject differs, as with “greater than great.” The Chandogya opens “let a man meditate on the syllable Om as the udgitha” (1.1.1), makes the syllable, a part of the udgitha, its object, and its story must follow its opening, so there prana is Om; the Brihadaranyaka has no such opening, so its udgitha is the whole chant, and prana is its singer, as 1.3.24 says, “he sang it as speech and breath.” Shared phrases do not make one topic, as the Mimamsa shows with two offerings whose cakes are identical and whose sections differ; and the Chandogya’s own meditation on the udgitha as space, “greater than great” (1.9.1), stays apart from its meditation on the udgitha in the eye and the sun (1.6), though both identify it with the highest Self. 3.3.8: the common name “udgitha-vidya” proves nothing, since the name is men’s convenience and no part of the text, and separate rites like the agnihotra and the new-moon sacrifice share the name Kathaka because one book holds them; only where no reason for difference exists, as with the two samvarga-vidyas, may a name count for unity. Two vidyas, then, and their details stay apart.

“Let a man meditate on the syllable Om as the udgitha” (Chandogya 1.1.1): Om and udgitha stand in the same case, and the opponent cannot decide how. The two ideas might be superimposed one on the other, as Vishnu is seen in his image; one might cancel the other, as “that you are” cancels the thought that the body is the self; the two words might name one thing, as “Brahmin” and “best of the twice-born” do; or “udgitha” might specify which Om is meant. 3.3.9 answers: specification is the right view, because Om extends over all the Vedas. Superimposition would force a secondary sense on one word and need a fruit nobody states, since “he becomes a fulfiller of desires” belongs to another meditation; cancellation yields no fruit and is impossible, since the idea of Om never leaves Om; and identity would make one of the two words idle, while “udgitha” is never used of the Om of the Rig and Yajur Vedas. So, as one says “bring the lotus that is blue,” the text says “meditate on the Om that is the udgitha,” singling out from the Om that runs through all three Vedas the Om that is part of the Saman chant; and a whole standing for its part is common speech, as when a village or a cloth is said to be burned.

In the colloquy of the pranas the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka give prana the qualities of being the oldest and the best, and then let the organs’ qualities, richest, firmest and the rest, pass to prana, “if I am the richest you are the richest”; the Kaushitaki (2.14) gives prana the first set only. Are the second set to be thought of where they are not mentioned? The opponent says no, since the Kaushitaki’s “he who knows thus” points to what its own text says and to nothing else. 3.3.10 answers: the qualities are supplied in the other places too, because the vidyas do not differ on the whole; the Kaushitaki’s “thus” may not reach the Vajasaneyins’ qualities, yet the Vajasaneyins’ “thus” does, and the vidya is one, so a quality taught in one shakha belongs to the subject wherever that subject is taught, as Devadatta does not lose his courage by traveling to a country where no one has heard of it.

The texts that set out Brahman’s nature give it bliss, knowledge, infinity, omnipresence, selfhood of all, each in its own place. In each place are only the attributes stated there to be understood, or all of them? 3.3.11: bliss and the rest, as belonging to the subject, are understood everywhere, by the rule of 3.3.10, since the subject, Brahman, is one in every passage. Then must “joy is its head, delight its right side, great delight its left, bliss its trunk, Brahman its tail and foundation” (Taittiriya 2.5) go everywhere too? 3.3.12: no, those have no force elsewhere, since more and less belong to plurality: joy, delight, great delight are degrees, there is room for degrees only where there are many, and Brahman is “one without a second”; besides, 1.1.12 showed that head and sides belong to the sheath of bliss and never to Brahman, and such attributes serve to fix the mind and are no objects of knowledge. Shankara adds that the sutra speaks of them as Brahman’s only to set a general rule for every attribute taught with a view to one meditation, “toward whom all blessings go” (Chandogya 4.15.2), “whose desires are true” (8.7.1): those stay in their meditation, as two queens serve one king, one with a fan and one with an umbrella, and neither takes over the other’s office. 3.3.13: the others hold everywhere, since their purport is the same, the one Brahman whose nature they teach; those are taught for knowledge, and the first kind for meditation.

Katha 1.3.10 to 1.3.11: “higher than the senses are the objects, higher than the objects the mind, higher than the mind the intellect, higher than the intellect the great self, higher than the great the unmanifest, higher than the unmanifest the person; higher than the person there is nothing, that is the goal, the highest road.” Does each step teach that one thing is higher than the one before, or does the whole teach only that the person is higher than all? The opponent says each step, since the text states each, and many sentences may teach many things. 3.3.14 answers: the passage is for meditation on the person, since the other information has no use; knowing that the objects outrank the senses serves no purpose that is seen or declared, while knowing the person above all serves release, “he who has known it is freed from the jaws of death” (1.3.15), and the honor paid to the person, “nothing is higher,” shows that the whole series is climbed for his sake. 3.3.15: and because of the word “Self”: “that Self is hidden in all beings and does not shine forth; the subtle seers see it with a keen and subtle mind” (1.3.12), which marks the rest as not-Self, hard as the person is to see; “the wise man should restrain speech in the mind” (1.3.13) enjoins the meditation, as 1.4.1 showed; and “that is the highest place of Vishnu” (1.3.9) was waiting for the answer to the question who stands at the end of the road.

Aitareya Aranyaka 2.4.1.1: “In the beginning this was the Self, one alone; nothing else blinked. He thought, shall I send forth worlds? He sent forth these worlds, the waters, the rays, death, the waters below.” Is this the highest Self or a lesser one? The opponent says a lesser one, Prajapati, for the text creates worlds and says nothing of elements, which it would create if the highest Self were meant; shruti and smriti give the making of worlds to a lower lord working under the highest, “in the beginning this was the Self in the shape of a person” (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.1), “he, the first embodied one, the person, the first maker of beings”; the Aitareyins themselves say “the seed of Prajapati is the gods”; Prajapati may well be called one before his creatures exist and may think; and leading a cow, a horse and a man to the gods is the work of a qualified self. 3.3.16 answers: the highest Self is meant, as in other places, because of what follows. In every other account of creation, “from that Self space arose” (Taittiriya 2.1), the highest Self is meant, and where “Self” is used of a lesser being a qualification says so, “in the shape of a person”; here the qualification that follows, “he thought, shall I send forth worlds,” fits only the highest.

3.3.17: if the drift of the whole is urged against it, the answer is that the drift fits, because of the assertion that before creation the Self was one alone, which makes full sense only of the highest Self; the worlds are created after the elements known from other texts, as 2.4.1 fitted “it sent forth fire” after space and air, since particulars of one text combine with those of another when the subject is one; and the story’s details, the guardians of the worlds, the body, the Self entering “by the suture of the skull” (2.4.3.7) and seeing “this person as the widely spread Brahman” (2.4.3.10), all serve the one lesson, that Brahman is the Self of all, as the Aranyaka says again, “knowledge is Brahman” (2.6.1.5 to 2.6.1.6). Shankara reads the two sutras once more of a second pair: Brihadaranyaka 4.3.7, which begins “who is that Self?” and ends “this great unborn Self is Brahman,” and Chandogya 6, which begins “being alone was this in the beginning” and ends “that is the Self, that you are”; the opponent would make the Chandogya’s close an imagined union to match its opening, and the answer is that the opening is defined by what follows, that the promise “by which the unheard is heard” is kept only if the Self is meant, and that “bring that pot” and “that pot, bring it” do not differ in sense.

In the prana colloquy both the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka say that everything down to dogs and birds is prana’s food and that water is its garment, and then add that those who know this rinse the mouth with water before and after eating, “thinking that thereby they clothe the breath”; the Madhyandinas add “therefore a man who knows this is to rinse” (Chandogya 5.2.2, Brihadaranyaka 6.1.14). Is the rinsing enjoined here, or the meditation, or both? The opponent says both, since both are stated and neither is settled elsewhere; or the rinsing alone, since it has the injunctive verb, the clothing of prana being its praise. 3.3.18 answers: the text refers to an act already known, and what is new is enjoined. Rinsing is settled by smriti as a purification and is only mentioned here; shruti cannot be the root of a smriti rule about a different matter, and nothing in the passage looks like a second rinsing of its own. What is new, and so what is enjoined, is the resolve that the water one rinses with shall be prana’s dress; the clothing clause cannot be praise, since no injunction stands there for it to praise, and “whatever there is, even dogs and worms, is your food” was likewise a meditation and never a license. Two acts, then, the rinsing that cleans a man and the thought that clothes his breath. The Kanvas end the passage at “they think,” without the Madhyandinas’ “therefore,” which confirms that the injunction in both recensions is the knowledge of water as the garment of prana.

The Shandilya vidya appears twice in one shakha: in the Agnirahasya of the Shatapatha, “let him meditate on the Self that consists of mind, whose body is prana, whose form is light,” and in the Brihadaranyaka, “that person consisting of mind, whose being is light, is within the heart, small as a grain of rice or barley; he is the ruler of all, the lord of all” (5.6.1). One vidya whose particulars combine, or two? The opponent says two: across shakhas a repetition is excused because different men read the texts, and within one shakha the same men read both, so a repetition would be idle unless the vidyas were distinct; nor can one passage enjoin the vidya and the other its particulars, since each repeats what the other says. 3.3.19 answers: in the same shakha also it is one vidya, because the object does not differ, Brahman consisting of mind and the rest, and the object makes the character of a meditation. The repetition has its use, since one text enjoins the vidya and the other adds particulars, and the shared qualities are exactly what let the reader recognize that the Brihadaranyaka is adding “lord of all” to the Shandilya vidya and to no other.

Brihadaranyaka 5.5: “the true (satya) is Brahman,” and that true is “the person in the sun’s orb and the person in the right eye”; the text then gives the Brahman in the sun the secret name “ahar” and the Brahman in the eye the secret name “aham.” Do both names apply to both abodes? 3.3.20 states the opponent’s view: as the Shandilya particulars combined, so here too, since the vidya is one, with one opening and one Brahman in two places, as a teacher’s rule of life holds whether he is in the village or the forest. 3.3.21 answers: no, because of the difference of place; “its secret name” is said once beside the sun and once beside the eye, and “its” points to what is near, so each name is taught for Brahman in one condition only, as a pupil serves the teacher one way when he sits and another when he stands, the teacher being the same man throughout. 3.3.22: and scripture shows it: the Chandogya transfers the sun-person’s form, joints and name to the eye-person in so many words (1.7.5), which it would not need to do if the attributes crossed of themselves.

A supplement of the Ranayaniyas says of Brahman, “held together (sambhrita) are the powers of which Brahman is the chief; the chief Brahman at first stretched out the sky.” Do these energies enter the Shandilya and dahara vidyas of the same shakha, which are also meditations on Brahman? 3.3.23 answers: for the same reason, difference of abode, they do not. In the Shandilya vidya Brahman is in the heart, in the dahara vidya it is the small space within the lotus of the heart, in the Upakosala vidya it is in the eye; attributes that face outward to the gods and the sky do not call up vidyas that place Brahman within the body, and particulars cross only where a shared mark lets one text recall the other. Brahman alone, as the common subject, is no such mark, since avowedly separate vidyas have Brahman in common, and one Brahman is meditated on in many ways through its many powers, as 3.3.7 settled.

The Tandins and the Paingins teach a purusha-vidya in which a man’s life is the sacrifice, his three ages the three pressings, his hunger the consecration, and so on, with formulas and mantras of its own (Chandogya 3.16 to 3.17). The Taittiriyas also liken man to the sacrifice: “of him who knows thus, the Self is the sacrificer, faith his wife,” and down the list (Taittiriya Aranyaka 10.64). Are the Chandogya’s particulars to be read into the Taittiriya text? 3.3.24 answers: no, because the others’ record is not like the purusha-vidya; the Taittiriyas list wife, sacrificer, Veda, altar, grass, post, butter, victim and priest, none of which the Chandogya has, they use the three pressings differently, and the one or two points shared, death as the closing bath, are lost among the differences. Moreover the Taittiriya does not make the man the sacrifice at all; “of him who knows” qualifies “of the sacrifice,” the man being the sacrificer, and the passage is a supplement to the teaching of the Self and renunciation that precedes it, with one fruit, “he obtains the greatness of Brahman,” while the Chandogya’s vidya stands alone with its own fruit, a life of a hundred and sixteen years. Two vidyas; nothing crosses.

Upanishads open with mantras and rites: the Atharvanikas’ “pierce him whole, pierce his heart, crush his veins, crush his head”; the Tandins’ “god Savitar, produce the sacrifice”; the Kathas’ and Taittiriyas’ “may Mitra be kind to us, and Varuna”; the Vajasaneyins’ brahmana on the pravargya, the Kaushitakins’ on the agnishtoma. Do these belong to the vidyas they stand beside? The opponent says yes, by proximity, which counts as proof where nothing stronger speaks: the piercing mantra can be read as praise of the heart, which the vidyas use as a seat, and a rite enjoined elsewhere may serve the vidyas as well, as the Brihaspati-sava serves the Vajapeya. 3.3.25 answers: they belong elsewhere, because their matter, piercing and the rest, differs from the vidyas’ matter. A mantra is tied to a rite by its indication (linga) and its sentence (vakya), and those, as the Mimamsa shows (3.3.14), outweigh proximity; the first mantra breathes hostility and belongs to a rite against an enemy, the second names a sacrifice in its own words, and the pravargya, once fixed to its own occasion by a stronger proof, cannot be refixed by a weaker; the Brihaspati-sava has an injunction, “having offered the Vajapeya he offers the Brihaspati-sava,” which these lack. They stand beside the vidyas because mantras and vidyas alike were to be studied in the forest.

The Tandins say the knower shakes off evil “as a horse shakes its hair” and reaches the world of Brahman (Chandogya 8.13.1); the Atharvanikas, “shaking off good and evil, free from passion, he reaches the highest oneness” (Mundaka 3.1.3); the Shatyayanins, “his sons take his inheritance, his friends his good deeds, his enemies his evil deeds”; the Kaushitakins give both, the shaking off and the passing on (1.4). Where only the shaking off is stated, is the passing to friends and enemies to be understood? The opponent says no: the text does not say it, what another shakha says belongs to another vidya, and the shaking is the knower’s own act while the obtaining is others’. 3.3.26 answers: where the getting rid is stated the obtaining is added, because the statement of obtaining is a supplement to it, as with the kushas, the meters, the praise and the singing; this was explained in the Mimamsa (10.8.15). Neither clause is an injunction to do something; both glorify knowledge, which strips the knower of the deeds that drive samsara and sends them to his friends and foes, and one glorifying passage may lean on another, as “the twenty-first from here is the sun” leans on “twelve months, five seasons, three worlds.” The parallels: the Shatyayanins’ “children of the udumbara” fixes the Bhallavins’ “kushas, children of the tree”; the Paingins settle that the gods’ meters come first; the Rigvedins fix the shodashin’s hymn to the half-risen sun; the Bhallavins say which priests join the singing; in each case the particular text defines the general one, and the alternative would be option, which is to be avoided. Shankara adds a second reading of the sutra: “shaking” means getting rid, since deeds have no substance to tremble like flags, since the horse that shakes itself throws off dust and old hairs, and since others could obtain the deeds only once their owner had let them go.

In the paryanka vidya of the Kaushitaki the knower, on the path of the gods, “comes to the river Viraja, crosses it by the mind alone, and there shakes off his good and evil deeds” (1.4). Does he lose them on the road, as the letter says, or when he leaves the body? 3.3.27 answers: at the departing, since there is nothing left for him to reach by them; for others say so too. Once the knower has left the body and knowledge is carrying him to Brahman, no reward remains that his good and evil deeds could still fetch on the way, so there is no reason to let them survive for a few more moments; their fruits run contrary to knowledge, so knowledge destroys them the moment he sets out, and the Kaushitakins only mention late what happens early, as the Tandins and the Shatyayanins place it early outright. 3.3.28: and because so there is no conflict with either, the effort and its result, as he chooses; the effort of restraint and study that wipes out the deeds can be made only while a man has a body, so the wiping out must also fall while he has one.

Some texts join the knower’s journey on the path of the gods to his shedding of good and evil; others name the shedding alone. Do the two always go together? The opponent says always, as the shedding always brings the passing to friends and foes. 3.3.29 answers: a purpose can be given to the journey only in two ways, with a distinction, or scripture is contradicted; if every knower journeyed, “shaking off good and evil he reaches the highest oneness” (Mundaka 3.1.3) would describe a going somewhere, and a man free of all desire, who moves nowhere, does not reach oneness by a change of place. 3.3.30: the distinction is sound because a purpose marked out for the going is seen in the one case, as in life: the paryanka vidya and the other meditations on the qualified Brahman promise a couch to climb, a Brahman on it to converse with, scents to smell, which need a journey to a place, while the man who has seen the Self’s unity, whose wishes are all fulfilled and whose seeds of suffering are burned here, waits only for the body to fall and has nowhere to go; one takes a road to reach a village, and no road to recover from a fever. The fourth adhyaya settles this at length.

The path of the gods is named in some meditations on the qualified Brahman, the paryanka, the five fires, the Upakosala, the dahara, and in others it is absent, the madhu, the Shandilya, the sixteen-part, the Vaishvanara. Does it belong only where it is named? The opponent says yes, since each section’s subject limits it, since otherwise anything could mean anything, and since the Upakosala and the five fires would not both spell out the path if it went with every vidya. 3.3.31 answers: there is no restriction; the path goes with all vidyas of the qualified Brahman that have exaltation for their fruit, and the subject is not contradicted, by scripture and by inference. The Chandogya sends on that path “those who know this” and also “those who in the forest follow faith and austerity” (5.10.1), and since the Shatapatha says that those skilled in works alone and penitents without knowledge do not go there (10.5.4.16), the second clause must mean knowers of other vidyas; the Vajasaneyins’ “those who in the forest worship faith and the true” means those who worship Brahman; and “those who know neither of these two paths become worms, birds and biting things” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.16) leaves the other vidyas no road except the gods’. Smriti agrees: “these two, the bright and the dark, are the world’s eternal paths; by one a man goes and returns no more, by the other he comes back” (Gita 8.26). The path is spelled out twice to help reflection. Shankara reads the sutra’s word as “of all vidyas” (sarvasam); Ramanuja reads “of all men” (sarvesham) and places this sutra after the next.

Does the knower, once his body falls, take another? The objection is that the question is idle, since knowledge brings release as surely as cooking brings cooked rice; the answer is that it is not idle, since history and the Puranas tell of knowers who took bodies again: Apantaratamas, teacher of the Vedas, born by Vishnu’s command as Krishna Dvaipayana at the turn of the Kali age; Vasishtha, Brahma’s mind-born son, begotten again by Mitra and Varuna after Nimi’s curse; Bhrigu and others reborn at Varuna’s sacrifice; Sanatkumara born as Skanda by a boon to Rudra; Daksha, Narada and more. The opponent concludes that knowledge of Brahman may or may not release. 3.3.32 answers: those who hold an office remain embodied as long as the office lasts. As the sun keeps its watch over the worlds for thousands of yugas and then “neither rises nor sets, he stands alone in the center” (Chandogya 3.11.1), and as a knower today waits only until the works already in motion are spent, “for him there is delay only so long as he is not freed from the body” (6.14.2), so these lords whom the highest Lord has charged with the upkeep of the worlds last while their charge lasts, passing from body to body as from house to house, keeping their memory of who they are, as Sulabha entered Janaka’s body to dispute with him and came back to her own.

No new works ripen for them, since knowledge burns the seed of works, “all his works perish when he has seen the high and the low” (Mundaka 2.2.8), “as fire reduces fuel to ashes” (Gita 4.37), and a burned seed does not sprout in part; the works already running stop when their push is spent, like an arrow. Knowledge has one result for all, release, “whatever god was awakened became that, and so with sages and men” (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.10); some great sages may have followed other vidyas first, for lordly power, and turned to the Self later; and since the fruit of knowledge is a thing seen, “the Brahman that is present, not hidden” (3.4.1), “that you are” spoken as a thing done, no doubt about it can stand, as Vamadeva sang “I was Manu, I was the sun” the moment he saw.

Yajnavalkya to Gargi: “the Brahmins call this the imperishable (akshara); it is not coarse, not fine, not short, not long” (Brihadaranyaka 3.8.8); the Mundaka: “that which cannot be seen or grasped, which has no family and no caste” (1.1.6). Some denials appear in one text and are missing from another. Does each hold only where it is stated? 3.3.33 answers: the conceptions of the akshara, these denials, are gathered into every meditation on it, because of the sameness of method and of object, as with the upasad offerings; the Mimamsa (3.3.9) explains this. All these texts teach Brahman the same way, by denying it every attribute, and they teach the same undivided Brahman, so what 3.3.11 said of positive attributes holds here of negative ones, the matter being split in two only to show the differences in detail. The parallel: the Jamadagnya sacrifice has its upasad offerings made of cakes, and the mantras for cakes, though recorded in the Udgatris’ Veda, are spoken by the Adhvaryu, since the offering is his work and the subordinate follows the principal; so the akshara’s attributes follow the akshara wherever it is taught.

“Two birds, companions and friends, cling to the same tree; one eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating” (Mundaka 3.1.1, Shvetashvatara 4.6). The Kathas: “the two, drinking the reward of their works in the world, have entered the cave, dwelling on the highest summit; the knowers of Brahman call them shadow and light” (1.3.1). One vidya or two? The opponent says two, since one text has one bird eat and the other abstain while the other text has both drink. 3.3.34 answers: one, because the same number is recorded, and the thing counted is the same, the Lord together with the jiva. The bird that looks on is the highest Self beyond desire, the subject of the next verse too, “when he sees the other, the Lord, contented”; the Katha’s pair is the same highest Self with the enjoying soul beside it, spoken of as drinking the way “the men with the umbrella” is said when one man carries it, and its context, “what you see as neither this nor that” (1.2.14), “the bridge of sacrificers, the imperishable Brahman” (1.3.2), was settled under 1.2.11. Since both texts teach the highest Self and name the soul only to show its identity with it, the question of one vidya or two, which does not even arise for the highest Brahman, is raised here only so that any particular stated in one may be supplied in the other.

In the Brihadaranyaka the same question is asked twice, by Ushasta and then by Kahola: “explain to me the Brahman that is present and not hidden, the Self within all” (3.4.1, 3.5.1). One vidya or two? The opponent says two, by the force of repetition, which in the Mimamsa marks a second rite, since a repetition that adds nothing is idle. 3.3.35 answers: one, because the Self is within all, as with the aggregate of the elements. Both question and answer in both places are about a Self inside everything, and one body cannot hold two such selves; a second one could be within all only in the relative way that water is within earth and fire within water in the body, which is no “within all.” Or the sutra’s phrase points to “the one god hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all beings” (Shvetashvatara 6.11), one Self in the whole mass of beings. 3.3.36: the repetition is explained as in other teachings: the Chandogya says “that is the Self, that you are, Shvetaketu” nine times and the vidya stays one, each repetition answering a fresh doubt at Shvetaketu’s “teach me more, sir”; here the two questions have one form, both answers close with “everything else is of evil,” the second question says “that very Brahman,” and the first section declares the Self that is neither cause nor effect while the second adds that it passes beyond hunger and thirst and the rest of samsara.

The Aitareyins say of the person in the sun, “what I am, that is he; what he is, that am I” (Aitareya Aranyaka 2.2.4.6), and the Jabalas, “I am you, reverend deity, and you are I.” Is the meditation single, the soul seen as Aditya, or double, each seen as the other in turn? The opponent says single: the text can mean only the soul’s oneness with the Lord, and a second meditation that made the Lord have the wandering soul for his Self would exalt the one and lower the other, so the doubled form merely confirms the oneness. 3.3.37 answers: there is an exchange, since the texts distinguish two, as elsewhere. Both texts say “I am you” and “you are I” as two statements, and two statements are idle unless two meditations rest on them; the Lord is not lowered, since what is meditated on even so is the oneness of the Self, and that the exchange confirms oneness is granted, as teaching the Lord’s true desires for meditation also proves a Lord who has them. The double relation is to be meditated on, and carried into other vidyas on the same subject.

Brihadaranyaka 5.4.1 enjoins knowledge of the true Brahman, “whoever knows this great, glorious, first-born as the true Brahman conquers these worlds,” and 5.5.2 continues, “now, what is the true, that is Aditya, the person in that orb and the person in the right eye,” and ends “he destroys evil and leaves it.” One vidya or two? The opponent says two, because two results are named, and the back reference “what is the true” can be explained by the sameness of the object alone. 3.3.38 answers: one vidya, since “the true” and the rest are the same; the clause “what is the true” refers back to 5.4, and where nothing else establishes a difference such a back reference decides for unity. The second result only praises the new instruction, the secret names ahar and aham, and since the fruit of this vidya has to be gathered from its glorifying clauses, the fruits named for its parts are gathered to the whole, so all its qualities, truth and the rest, are held in one act of meditation. Shankara rejects another reading, which makes the sutra join this vidya to the Chandogya’s golden person in the sun (1.6.6): that vidya is tied to the udgitha and the Saman from beginning to end and this one has no such tie, so those two stay apart.

Chandogya 8.1.1 opens the dahara vidya, “in this city of Brahman is a small lotus, a house, and in it a small space,” and describes “the Self free from sin, free from age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, whose desires are true, whose purposes are true” (8.1.5). The Brihadaranyaka says, “he is that great unborn Self who consists of knowledge, among the pranas, the space within the heart; in it lies the ruler of all” (4.4.22). Do the two exchange their qualities? 3.3.39 answers: true desire and the rest go there and here, because of the abode and the rest: both place the Self in the heart, both make the Lord the object, both call him the bank that keeps the worlds apart. That the Chandogya gives the qualities to the space and the Brihadaranyaka to Brahman in the space is no difference, since 1.3.14 showed the space to be Brahman. One difference remains: the Chandogya meditates on the qualified Brahman, its true desires being objects of knowledge alongside the Self (8.1.6), while the Brihadaranyaka teaches the attributeless Brahman, Janaka asking “speak on, for the sake of release” and Yajnavalkya answering “that person is attached to nothing” (4.3.14 to 4.3.15) and closing with “not so, not so” (4.5.15), so that “ruler of all” there is praise and no attribute. Since the qualified Brahman is at bottom the unqualified, the sutra combines the qualities to set out Brahman’s glory. It does not add them to the meditation.

The Vaishvanara vidya of the Chandogya says, “the first food that comes is to be offered as a homa; the first offering he makes he offers to prana, saying svaha,” and so through five offerings, which the text then calls an agnihotra, “all beings sit round the agnihotra as hungry children round their mother” (5.19.1 to 5.24.4). When a man does not eat, is this pranagnihotra dropped? 3.3.40 states the opponent’s view: it is not dropped, because of the respect shown it; the Jabalas say the host is to eat before his guests, since otherwise it would be as if he offered another man’s agnihotra without offering his own, and a rule that will not allow the order to lapse will not allow the offering itself to lapse; the clause about the first food only prescribes the material, as the word “agnihotra” brings in all the details of the real one, as it does for the Kundapayins’ year-long rite, and by the Mimamsa rule a missing material is replaced, so on a fast the offering is made with water. 3.3.41 answers: when eating takes place, the offering is made from that food, because the text says so; the clause presents the food as already there for eating and makes the offering ride on it, so it cannot command a substitute when there is no eating; “agnihotra” here stands in a glorifying passage, with no injunctive force to import details, and the details would not fit, since there is no fire, the offering being made in the mouth, “the chest is the altar, the hairs the grass, the heart the garhapatya, the mind the southern fire, the mouth the ahavaniya” being imagination only, and since eating has its own times. The passage about respect fixes the host’s priority when food is eaten; it does not make the offering a standing obligation. On a fast the pranagnihotra is omitted.

Some vidyas rest on parts of the sacrifice, “let a man meditate on the syllable Om as the udgitha” (Chandogya 1.1.1). Are they bound to the rite as the ladle’s being of parna wood is bound to every sacrifice that uses a ladle, or loose like the godohana vessel, used only by one who wants cattle? The opponent says bound: they stand under no special heading, they attach to the rite through the udgitha as other subsidiaries do, and the results named for them, “he becomes a fulfiller of desires” (1.1.7), are praise in the present tense and enjoin nothing, like “he hears no evil sound” said of the parna ladle. 3.3.42 answers: the statements about them are not restricted to the rite, because that is seen, and they have a separate fruit, the non-obstruction of the rite’s result. Scripture lets those who do not know them sacrifice, “both he who knows this and he who does not perform the sacrifice” (1.1.10), and lets the Prastotri sing without knowing the prastava’s deity (1.10.9); it then adds that “the sacrifice a man performs with knowledge, with faith, with the Upanishad is more powerful,” and “more powerful” concedes power to the sacrifice without the vidya, which could not be if the vidya were a necessary limb, since a rite missing a limb accomplishes nothing. The results, “the worlds in the ascending and descending line are his” (2.2.3), are real results, since a meditation is an act and an act can have its own fruit, where a mere quality like parna-ness cannot; so the udgitha meditations are like the godohana, with a fruit of their own, and the Kalpa sutras rightly leave them out of the rite.

The Brihadaranyaka (1.5.21 to 1.5.23) makes prana the best among the organs and Vayu the best among the gods; the Chandogya calls Vayu the absorber among the gods and prana the absorber among the organs (4.3.1 to 4.3.3). Are Vayu and prana to be meditated on as one? The opponent says one: in their true nature they do not differ, “Agni became speech and entered the mouth,” “what prana is, that is Vayu,” the closing verse speaks of prana alone, the one observance enjoined is of prana, and the Chandogya says “one god swallowed the four great ones.” 3.3.43 answers: they are held apart, as the offerings are; the Mimamsa has explained it. The text teaches them separately for the two sets, and separate instruction would be idle without separate meditation; sameness of nature allows difference of condition, and the text even compares them, “as it was with the central breath among the breaths, so with Vayu among the gods” (1.5.22); “one observance only” sets aside the observances of speech and the rest that death broke, and the fruit named, union with “that deity,” is union with Vayu, the deity that never sets; the Chandogya too says “these are the two absorbers” and counts “these five and the other five make ten.” The parallel is the ishti of three cakes to Indra the ruler, the over-ruler and the self-ruler (Taittiriya Samhita 2.3.6): one Indra, three deities by their epithets, three offerings. Here, though, it is one vidya with a double activity inside it, as the one agnihotra is offered morning and evening.

In the Agnirahasya of the Shatapatha (10.5.3), in the brahmana that begins “in the beginning this was not,” mind “saw thirty-six thousand shining fire-altars of its own, made of mind, piled with mind,” and the text goes on to altars of speech, breath, sight, hearing, work and fire. Are these altars part of the rite under whose heading they stand, the piling of the brick altar, or a vidya of their own? 3.3.44 answers first: a vidya, because of the majority of indicatory marks, “whatever these beings conceive in their minds is a means for those altars,” “all beings always pile those altars for him who knows thus, even while he sleeps,” and the mark outweighs the heading, as the Mimamsa shows (3.3.14). 3.3.45 to 3.3.46 give the opponent his say: they are a form of the previous altar, by the heading; a part of the act, like the mental cup, the soma cup of the tenth day that is taken up, offered and drunk in thought only and still belongs to the rite; the marks cited are praise and prove nothing; and the text transfers the real altar’s size to them, “each one as large as that former altar,” which is possible only between things of one kind.

3.3.47 answers: a vidya, because the text asserts it, “these altars are piled of knowledge only,” “by knowledge they are piled for him who knows thus.” 3.3.48: and because the marks are seen. 3.3.49: and the view cannot be set aside, since direct statement, mark and sentence are stronger than the heading, and all three speak here: “only” would be pointless if the altars were a limb of the rite, since no one supposed them made by outward means; piling that goes on while a man sleeps cannot be a limb of a rite that is over in a day, as with the agnihotra of speech and breath “offered always, waking or sleeping” (Kaushitaki 2.6); no clear injunction stands here for the passage to be praise of, so any injunction must be built from the passage and will carry its “always” with it; and “for him who knows thus” ties the altars to a class of men, which no limb of an act requires.

3.3.50: also because of the connection and the rest, “with mind only they were set up, with mind only piled, with mind the cups were taken, with mind the udgatris praised,” which identifies thirty-six thousand movements of the mind, the days of a man’s life, with the altars and cups in imagination, as elsewhere the man is the sacrifice; the transfer of size belittles the brick altar; the mental altars could not hold the ahavaniya fire, so they cannot be options for the real one; as other vidyas, the Shandilya for one, separate from works by their own connections, so this; and a precedent is seen, the aveshti offering lifted out of the rajasuya because it is open to the three upper classes while the rajasuya belongs to the Kshatriya alone. 3.3.51: resemblance to the mental cup proves nothing, since on the ground of the texts the altars are seen to serve man alone, as “death” is said of the sun and of Agni without making them one, and the world is “a fire, Gautama; the sun its fuel” (Chandogya 5.4.1) without being a fire. 3.3.52: and the following brahmana, “that piled fire is this world,” shows the same intent, since its verse says “by knowledge they ascend to where all wishes are won; the men of works do not go there, nor penitents without knowledge,” and the earlier brahmana ends “immortal becomes he whose Self is death”; the vidya is tied to the brick altar because so many of that altar’s details are borrowed into it in imagination. The altars of the mind are a vidya. They are no part of the rite.

Who is the man these altars serve? Here Shankara pauses the survey of the vidyas to prove that a Self exists apart from the body, since without it there is no one for the injunctions about the next world, and no one to whom “Brahman is your Self” could be said; the Mimamsa teachers left the proof for the Shariraka, and Badarayana supplies it. 3.3.53 states the Lokayata case: some say there is no separate Self, because of its presence where a body is. Consciousness is not seen in earth and the other elements singly or mixed, yet it may arise when they take the form of a body, as intoxicating power arises when certain things are mixed; a man is a body with consciousness as its quality; and life, motion, consciousness and memory are found only where a body is and never without one, so they are qualities of the body, as light and heat are qualities of fire, and no other seat for them can be shown. 3.3.54 answers: there is separation, because its existence does not depend on that of the body; the opposite does not hold; and the case is like perception.

If presence with the body makes these qualities the body’s, absence while the body remains makes them not the body’s, and they are absent in the corpse while form and size remain; the body’s qualities are seen by others and consciousness is not; and no one can show that consciousness ends when a body ends, since it may have passed to another body, so the opponent’s view rests on a guess. Ask him what consciousness is: if it is perception of the elements and their products, they are its objects, and a thing does not act on itself, fire does not burn itself and the acrobat cannot climb onto his own shoulders; color does not perceive color, while the elements, outside and in the body, are perceived by consciousness; so the consciousness that has them for its objects stands apart from them, and the Self, whose nature is consciousness, stands apart from the body. The Self is lasting, since consciousness is uniform, since a man says “I saw this” across changes of state, and since memory is possible. Lamps are present when a man sees and absent when he does not, and seeing is no quality of the lamp; the body is an auxiliary of the same kind, and not even a necessary one, since the dreamer perceives a great deal while his body lies still.

Back to the vidyas. Each Veda’s shakhas enjoin meditations on parts of the rite, “let a man meditate on the syllable Om as the udgitha” (Chandogya 1.1.1), “on the fivefold Saman as the five worlds” (2.2.1), “the hymn is this earth” (Aitareya Aranyaka 2.1.2.1), “the piled fire is this world” (Shatapatha 10.5.4.1), and the udgitha of one shakha differs from another’s in accent and the rest. Does a meditation hold only for the udgitha of its own shakha? The opponent says yes, by proximity: “let a man meditate on the udgitha” needs a specification, and the nearest one is at hand in its own shakha. 3.3.55 answers: the meditations tied to parts of the rite are not restricted to shakhas, by the Veda they belong to; the injunction names the udgitha with no specification, direct statement outweighs proximity, and nothing forbids a general reference, so the meditations hold for the udgitha of every shakha. 3.3.56: or there is no conflict, as with mantras and the rest, which cross shakhas all the time: some Yajurveda shakhas lack the mantra “you are the cock” for taking up the grinding stone and still prescribe its use; one lacks the injunction of the five prayaja offerings and still fixes their number and place; one names no victim for Agni and Soma and still has the mantra that calls it a he-goat; “Agni, promote the hautra” and the hymn “he who as soon as born” are read in one Veda and used in others. As the parts of the rite that carry the meditations are valid everywhere, so are the meditations.

In the story of Prachinashala Aupamanyava and the five other householders who went to King Ashvapati Kaikeya (Chandogya 5.11 to 5.18), each sage meditates on one thing as the Self, heaven, the sun, air, space, water, earth, and the king tells each, “that is only the head of the Self,” “only the eye,” and so on, then teaches the whole, “of that Vaishvanara Self the head is the bright one, the eye the all-formed, the breath the one of many paths, the trunk the full, the bladder wealth, the feet the earth” (5.18.2). Does the text teach the meditations on the parts as well, or the whole alone? The opponent says the parts too, since the text uses the verb “you meditate” of each, and names a fruit for each, “therefore every kind of Soma offering is seen in your house.” 3.3.57 answers: the whole, “plenitude” (bhuman), takes precedence, as with sacrifices, and scripture shows it so. The texts of the new-moon sacrifice enjoin the whole rite with its members and no member by itself; here the whole section hangs together, from the six who could not find a footing in the knowledge of Vaishvanara, through the rejection of each partial meditation, “your head would have fallen had you not come to me,” to the close that rests every result on the whole, “he eats food in all worlds, in all beings, in all selves”; the separate fruits are gathered into the fruit of the whole, and “you meditate” restates what each sage was doing with another purpose in view. Shankara also refuses the commentators who read “precedence” as leaving the partial meditations open, since that splits the sentence and ignores the blame the text lays on them; “precedence” here means sole authority.

The last ruling could tempt a reader to gather every meditation on the Lord into one, since the object is one: “he who consists of mind, whose body is prana” (Chandogya 3.14.2), “Brahman is ka, Brahman is kha” (4.10.5), “whose desires are true, whose purposes are true” (8.7.3); and likewise the many texts on prana. The opponent argues that the object fixes the character of a cognition as material and deity fix a rite, so one object means one cognition, the separate texts serving only to add qualities, and all the qualities should be combined. 3.3.58 answers: the vidyas are separate, because of the difference of words and the rest. The texts say “he knows,” “let him meditate,” “let him form the idea,” and difference of terms is a ground of difference of acts (Mimamsa 2.2.1); the words all name a mental act, yet each passage connects the Lord with other qualities, and difference of connection makes difference of injunction, and so of vidya. No rule picks out one passage as the vidya’s injunction and the rest as its qualities; each names several qualities; qualities common to several, “true desires,” would not be repeated; each section is complete in itself, being taught to a man with a particular wish; and no text enjoins a meditation on the whole here as the Vaishvanara text did. Grant unity on the ground of one object and every quality in every Upanishad would have to be combined, which is impossible.

The vidyas being separate, may a man heap them up or choose among them as he likes? There is no ground for a rule of accumulation, since nothing makes the vidyas obligatory as the agnihotra and the new-moon rite are; and the opponent argues that there can be no rule of option either, since one entitled to a vidya is not shut out of another, and that even sameness of fruit proves nothing, since rites with the same fruit, heaven, may also be taken as one pleases. 3.3.59 answers: there is restriction to option, because the fruit does not differ. The fruit of each is the direct sight of its object, the Lord, and once that sight has come through one meditation a second is pointless; nor could several meditations together bring it, since they would scatter the mind. That the fruit comes through direct sight scripture says, “he who has this faith and no doubt” (Chandogya 3.14.4), “having become a god he goes to the gods” (Brihadaranyaka 4.1.2), and the Gita (8.6). A man chooses one of the vidyas whose fruit is the same and holds to it until he sees what it teaches.

The counter-case. Vidyas tied to wishes, “he who knows the wind as the child of the quarters never weeps for his sons” (Chandogya 3.15.2), “he who meditates on name as Brahman walks at will as far as name reaches” (7.1.5), work their results through their unseen effect, as rites do, and aim at no direct sight. 3.3.60 rules that these may be heaped up or left single as one likes, because the reason given before, the one sight that makes a second meditation idle, is absent here.

The meditations enjoined in the three Vedas on parts of the rite, the udgitha and the rest: must they be combined, as the parts they rest on are combined in the performance, or may one proceed as one likes? The opponent has four sutras. 3.3.61: with the meditations on members it is as with their abodes; a meditation follows what it rests on, and the stotra and the other members are combined. 3.3.62: and because of the teaching: the members are taught in the three Vedas, and so are the meditations on them. 3.3.63: because of the rectification: “from the seat of the hotri he sets right any fault in the udgitha” (Chandogya 1.5.5), where a thing of the Rigveda, the pranava, is joined to a meditation of the Samaveda, so meditations of different Vedas combine. 3.3.64: and because the text names a quality common to the three: “by that syllable the threefold knowledge proceeds; with Om the adhvaryu gives his orders, with Om the hotri recites, with Om the udgatri sings,” so the abode is common and the vidyas resting on it go together.

3.3.65 answers: rather not, since no text states their going together. Scripture does state the going together of the members, “after taking the cup he performs the stotra,” “after the stotra he recites,” “Prastotri, sing the Saman”; no like text exists for the meditations, which serve the man, where the texts of succession bind only the members that serve the rite, as 3.3.42 showed with the godohana. The two marks of 3.3.63 and 3.3.64 yield no direct statement; and that every performance comprises every abode does not drag the meditations after it, since the abodes do not cause the meditations, though the meditations could not exist without them. 3.3.66: and because scripture shows it: “a brahma priest who knows this saves the sacrifice, the sacrificer and all the priests” (Chandogya 4.17.10), which could not be said if every priest knew every meditation. The meditations on the members may be combined or kept single, as one likes. So the pada ends where it began, with the vidyas: one where their injunction, form, name and fruit agree, many where these differ, and in no case a chain on the man who would meditate.