The Vedânta-Sûtras, Part II, with the Commentary by Sankarâkârya — SBE Vol. 38
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The translator’s English as printed (George Thibaut). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
p. 95
18. On account of the scriptural statement of difference.
The pra;/a is everywhere spoken of as dififerent from speech, &c. The passage, e.g. beginning with ' They said to speech ' (Brz. Up. I, 3, 2), enumerates speech, &c., which were overwhelmed by the evil of the Asuras, concludes thereupon the section treating of speech, &c., and then specially mentions the mukhya pra;za as overcoming the Asuras, in the paragraph beginning ' Then they said to the breath in the mouth,'— Other passages also referring to that difference maybe quoted, so, for instance, ' He made mind, speech, and breath for himself (Brz. Up. I, 5, 3). — For this reason also the other pra;^as are different in being from the chief pra;/a. — Another reason follows.
19, And on account of the difference of characteristics.
There is moreover a difference of characteristics between the chief pra^a and the other prawas. When speech &c. are asleep, the chief pr^;/a alone is awake. The chief prana. alone is not reached by death, while the other pra«as are. The staying and departing of the chief prawa — not that of the sense-organs — is the cause of the maintenance and the destruction of the body. The sense-organs, on the other hand, are the cause of the perception of the sense-objects, not the chief pra;/a. Thus there are manifold differences distinguishing the prawa from the senses, and this also shows the latter to be different in being from the pra«a. — To infer from the passage, ' thereupon they all assumed his form,' that the sense-organs are nothing but pra«a is wrong, because there also an examination of the context makes us understand their difference. For there the sense-organs are enumerated first ('Voice held, I shall speak/ &c.) ; after that it is said that speech, &c. were seized by death in the form of weariness (' Death having become weariness held them back ; therefore speech grows weary ') ; finally pra;/a is mentioned separately as not having been overcome by death (' but death did not seize the central breath '\ and is
p. 96
asserted to be the best (' he is the best of us '). The assuming of the form of prawa has therefore, in accordance with the quoted passages, to be understood to mean that the energizing of speech and so on depends on the pra;za, but not that they are identical with it. — Hence it follows that the word 'pra;za' is applied to the sense-organs in a secondary sense. Thus ^ruti also says, 'Thereupon they all assumed his form, and therefore they are called after him pra;/as;' a passage declaring that the word prawa, which properly refers to the chief prawa, is secondarily applied to the sense-organs also. Speech and the other sense-organs are therefore different in being from the pra«a.
20. But the fashioning of names and forms belongs to him who renders tripartite, on account of the teaching (of scripture).
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