The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Religion
The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Vedanta
All this, we rejoin, is unfounded. What the words in all sentences
whatsoever aim at conveying is only a particular connexion of the things
known to be denoted by those words. Words such as 'blue,' standing in co-
ordination with others, express that some matter possessing the
attribute of blueness, &c., as known from the ordinary use of language,
is connected with some other matter. When, e.g., somebody says 'bring
the blue lotus,' a thing is brought which possesses the attribute of
blueness. And when we are told that 'a herd of elephants excited with
passion lives in the Vindhya-forest,' we again understand that what is
meant is something possessing several attributes denoted by several
words. Analogously we have to understand, as the thing intimated by
Vedânta-texts in the form of coordination, Brahman as possessing such
and such attributes.--It is an error to assume that, where a sentence
aims at setting forth attributes, one attribute is to be taken as
qualifying the thing in so far as qualified by another attribute; the
case rather is that the thing itself is equally qualified by all
attributes. For co-ordination means the application, to one thing, of
several words having different reasons of application; and the effect of
co-ordination is that one and the same thing, because being connected--
positively or negatively--with some attribute other than that which is
conveyed by one word, is also known through other words. As e.g. when it
is said that 'Devadatta (is) dark-complexioned, young, reddish-eyed, not
stupid, not poor, of irreproachable character.' Where two co-ordinate
words express two attributes which cannot exist combined in one thing,
one of the two words is to be taken in a secondary sense, while the
other retains its primary meaning, as e.g. in the case of the sentence,
'The Vâhîka man is an ox.' But in the case of the 'blue lotus' and the
like, where there is nothing contradictory in the connexion of the two
attributes with one thing, co-ordination expresses the fact of one thing
being characterised by two attributes.--Possibly our opponent will here
make the following remark. A thing in so far as defined by its
correlation to some one attribute is something different from the thing
in so far as defined by its correlation to some second attribute; hence,
even if there is equality of case affixes (as in 'nîlam utpalam'), the
words co-ordinated are incapable of expressing oneness, and cannot,
therefore, express the oneness of a thing qualified by several
attributes; not any more than the juxtaposition of two words such as
'jar' and 'cloth'--both having the same case-ending--can prove that
these two things are one. A statement of co-ordination, therefore,
rather aims at expressing the oneness of a thing in that way that it
presents to the mind the essential nature of the thing by means of
(words denoting) its attributes.--This would be so, we reply, if it were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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