The Vedanta Sutras of Badarayana: Third Adhyâya. Third Pâda.: III, 3, 38

---

38. For the True and so on are one and the same (vidyâ).

The text of the Vâgasaneyaka, after having enjoined the knowledge of the True, together with a meditation on the syllables of its name ('Whosoever knows this great glorious first-born as the true Brahman,' &c., Bri. Up. V, 4, 1), continues, 'Now what is the True, that is the Âditya, the person that dwells in yonder orb, and the person in the right eye' (V, 5, 2).--The doubt here arises whether the text enjoins two vidyâs of the True or one only.

Two, the pûrvapakshin maintains. For the text declares two different results, one in the earlier passage, 'He conquers these worlds' (V, 4, 1); the other one later on. 'He destroys evil and leaves it' (V, 5, 3). And what our opponent may call a reference to the subject-matter under discussion, 1 is merely due to the circumstance of the object of meditation being the same (in the two vidyâs).

To this we make the following reply.--There is only one vidyâ of the True, because the clause, 'That which is the True,' &c., refers back to that True which is treated

1, and as there is unity of vidyâ, all those fruits which the text states in connexion with the single parts of the vidyâ are to be combined and put in connexion with the vidyâ taken as a whole.--The conclusion therefore is that the text records only one vidyâ of the True, distinguished by such and such details, and that hence all the qualities mentioned, such as Truth and so on, are to be comprehended in one act of meditation.

Some commentators are of opinion that the above Sûtra refers (not to the question whether Bri. Up. V, 4 and V, 5 constitute one vidyâ but) to the question whether the Vâgasaneyaka-passage about the persons in the sun and in the eye, and the similar Khândogya-passage (I, 6, 6, 'Now that golden person who is seen within the sun,' &c.) form one vidyâ or not. They conclude that they do so, and that hence truth and the other qualities mentioned in

Footnotes

245:1 Viz. the clause in V, 5, 2, 'That which is the true,' which apparently--or really--connects the vidyâ of V, 5 with that of V, 4.

246:1 For the vidyâ contains no explicit statement that a man desirous of such and such a fruit is to meditate on the True in such and such a way.--That in cases where the fruit is not stated in a vidhi-passage it must be supplied from the arthavâda-passages, is taught in the Pû. Mî. Sû. IV, 3, eighth adhikarana.