The Sānkhya Kārikā, with the Bhāshya of Gauḍapāda — trans. H. T. Colebrooke and H. H. Wilson (1837)

The intellectual organs concern specific objects: they apprehend objects which have specific properties. The intellectual organs of men distinguish sound, touch, form, taste, smell, along with objects of indifference, pleasure and pain. The organs of the gods apprehend objects which have no specific distinctions. So, amongst the five organs of action, speech concerns sound. Speech, whether of gods or of men, articulates words, recites verses, and the like; and this instrument is the same in both orders of beings. The rest—all except speech; the hand, the foot, and the organs of excretion and generation—regard all five objects: that ufagfefcta | ogp. 114 is, sound and the other four objects of perception belong to all the other organs; for there may be sound, touch, form, taste, and smell in the hands; the foot treads upon the earth, of which sound and the rest may be characteristics ; the excretory organ separates that in which the five objects abide ; and the generating organs produce the secretion which is equally characterised by the five organs of sense.

COMMENT.

Another distinction is made in the functions of the external instrnments, as they regard objects with or without specific characteristics.

Objects are distinguished as having specific characters or effects, sartsésha ®, and as devoid of them, nirvisésha 1; and the instruments are discriminated according to their capability of conveying notions of either. The organs of sense in mortals can apprehend ouly those objects which have specitic characters; either sensible, as colour, form, taste, &c.; or moral, as pleasant, painful, or indifferent. The faculties of the gods and of sages can apprehend objects without such characteristic properties, ither pleasure, pain, nor and which exercise no moral effect, producing 1 indifference. The S. Tatwa Kaumudi ideutitics ‘specitic’ with * gross corporeal’ objects {, and ‘ unspecific’ with * subtile and rndimental’ objects J; the latter of which are cognizable alone by the organs of holy men and deities §. This distinction applies to all the external organs, except the voice, which in men, saints, and gods can articulate sensible, specitic, or corporeal words alone ; for it is the organ of the voice that is the origin of nate with any thing speech. Speech cannot, like sound, taste, &c., ori gross or subtile exterior to the speaker; it must proceed from him, through the agency of a gross material instrument, and must therefore be gross or sensible itself, Gross corporeal mechanism cannot be the source of a subtile product, and therefore with every order of beings

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speech must be specific. ‘The rest,’ séshdni referring to the organ of speech, implies the other organs of action, all of which may regard the five objects of perception; that is, they may comprehend them all; as ‘from the combination (or capability) of sound, touch, colour, smell, taste, in objects like a water-jar and others, which may be compassed or taken hold of by the hand, &c.*’ S. Tatwa Kaumudi,

XXXV. Since intellect, with the (other two) internal instruments, adverts to every object, therefore those three instruments are warders, and the rest are gates. BHASHYA.

With the internal; that is, intellect, with egotism and mind. Adverts to; takes, apprehends; that is, apprehends sound and the rest at all three seasons. Therefore these three are warders, and the rest are gates,— The rest; the other instruments; instruments being understood. Further—

COMMENT.

A metaphor is employed to illustrate the functions of the external and internal instruments.

The internal instruments are compared to warders, doorkeepers, or to persons having charge of a door or gate; not opening and closing it merely, but as taking note of all that enter: the external senses being the doors or gateways by which the objects of perception gain admission.

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XXXVI.

Turse characteristically differing from each other, and variously affected by qualitics, present to the intellect the soul's whole purpose, enlightening it as a lamp.

BHASHYA.