[Footnote 85: The above discussion of the prohibitory passages of the Veda is of a very scholastic nature, and various clauses in it are differently interpreted by the different commentators. /S/a@nkara endeavours to fortify his doctrine, that not all parts of the Veda refer to action by an appeal to prohibitory passages which do not enjoin action but abstinence from action. The legitimacy of this appeal might be contested on the ground that a prohibitory passage also, (as, for instance, 'a Brahma/n/a is not to be killed,') can be explained as enjoining a positive action, viz. some action opposed in nature to the one forbidden, so that the quoted passage might be interpreted to mean 'a determination, &c. of not killing a Brahma/n/a is to be formed;' just as we understand something positive by the expression 'a non-Brahma/n/a,' viz. some man who is a kshattriya or something else. To this the answer is that, wherever we can, we must attribute to the word 'not' its primary sense which is the absolute negation of the word to which it is joined; so that passages where it is joined to words denoting action must be considered to have for their purport the entire absence of action. Special cases only are excepted, as the one alluded to in the text where certain prohibited actions are enumerated under the heading of vows; for as a vow is considered as something positive, the non-doing of some particular action must there be understood as intimating the performance of some action of an opposite nature. The question as to the various meanings of the particle 'not' is discussed in all treatises on the Purva Mima/m/sa; see, for instance, Arthasamgraha, translation, p. 39 ff.] [Footnote 86: The Self is the agent in a sacrifice, &c. only in so far as it imagines itself to be joined to a body; which imagination is finally removed by the cognition of Brahman.] [Footnote 87: The figurative Self, i.e. the imagination that wife, children, possessions, and the like are a man's Self; the false Self, i.e. the imagination that the Self acts, suffers, enjoys, &c.] [Footnote 88: I.e. the apparent world with all its distinctions.] [Footnote 89: The words in parentheses are not found in the best manuscripts.] [Footnote 90: The most exalted of the three constituent elements whose state of equipoise constitutes the pradhana.] [Footnote 91: Knowledge can arise only where Goodness is predominant, not where the three qualities mutually counterbalance one another.] [Footnote 92: The excess of Sattva in the Yogin would not enable him to rise to omniscience if he did not possess an intelligent principle independent of Sattva.]