Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

work. Brahman- If the sacrifice is simply the Vedic sacrifice, if the work from which it is born is the Vedic rule of works and if the brahman from which the work itself is bom is the shabdabrahman in the sense only of the letter of the Veda, then all the positions of the Vedist dogma are conceded and i68 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE there is nothing more. Ceremonial sacrifice is the right means of gaining children, wealth, enjoyment ; by ceremonial sacrifice rain is brought down from heaven and the prosperity and continuity of the race assured ; life is a continual transaction between the gods and men in which man offers ceremonial gifts to the gods from the gifts they have bestowed on him and in return is enriched, protected, fostered. Therefore all human works have to be accompanied and turned into a sacrament by ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic worship ; work not so dedicated is accursed, enjoyment without previous ceremonial sacrifice and ritual consecration is a sin. Even salvation, even the highest good is to be gained by ceremonial sacrifice. It must never be abandoned. Even the seeker of liberation has to continue to do ceremonial sacrifice, although without attachment ; it is by ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic works done without attachment that men of the type of Janaka attained to spiritual perfection and liberation.

Obviously, this cannot be the meaning of the Gita, for it would be in contradiction with all the rest of the book. Even in the passage itself, with- out the illumining interpretation afterwards given to it in the fourth chapter, we have already an indica- tion of a wider sense where it is said that sacrifice ii bom from work, work from brahman, brahman from the Akshara, and therefore the^all-pervading Brahman, sarvagatam brahma, is establishe d in the sa mfic^ T he connecting logic of the ** therefore** and the repetition of the word brahma are significant ;

for it shows clearly that the brahman from which all work is born has to be understooSTwitH an eye not so much to the current Vedic teaching in which it means the Veda as to a symbolical sense in which the creative Word is identical with the all-pervading Brahman, the Eternal, the one Self present in all existences, sarvahhiXteshu, and present in all the workings of existence. The Ve.da,ig>J;he knowledge of the Divine, the. Etemal, — “I am He who is to be known in all the books of the Knowledge,” vedeshu vedyah, Krishna will say in a subsequent chapter ; but it is the knowledge of him in the workings of Prakriti, in the workings of the three gunas, first qualities or modes of Nature, traigunyavishayd vedah. This Brahm an or Divine in the workings oi^. Nature is born, as we may say, ou t_ of ftHe Aksh?ira, the immutable Purusha,^ the Self. stands abo.ye_all the modes or qualities or . wott- ing of Nature^ nistraigunya. The Brahman is one buT self-displayed in two aspects, the immutable BHng and the creator originator of worksjjLthe mutable becoming, Atman, sarvabhutdni ; it is the immobile omnipresent Soul of things and it is jhc spiritual principle of the mobile workings of things, ’Purusha poised in himself ancL Purusha .active _in ^akriti ; it is aksharj^znd hshara,^ In both of these aspects the Divine Being, l^ushottama^^ln anif^ ju the universej^ the immutable above all qualities is ffis_ jpqise ^ of peace, self-possession, equality, samam BraHhia ; ffoyp that proc eeds H is |nanifesta.tion4n 4he qualities of Prakriti and then