them fruitlessly.  Indeed, one who holds the contents of a work in memory without comprehending their meaning is said to bear an useless burden.  He, however, who is conversant with the true meaning of a treatise, is said to have studied that treatise to purpose.  Questioned regarding the meaning of a text, it behoveth one to communicate that meaning which he has comprehended by a careful study.  That person of dull intelligence who refuses to expound the meanings of texts in the midst of a conclave of the learned, that person of foolish understanding, never succeeds in expounding the meaning correctly.[1618] An ignorant person, going to expound the true meaning of treatises, incurs ridicule.  Even those possessed of a knowledge of the Soul have to incur ridicule on such occasions (if what they go to explain has not been acquired by study).  Listen now to me, O monarch, as to how the subject of Emancipation has been explained (by preceptors to disciple from days of old) among highsouled persons conversant with the Sankhya and the Yoga systems of philosophy.  That which the Yogin, behold is precisely that which the Sankhyas arrive after to attain.  He who sees the Sankhya and the Yoga systems to be one and the same is said to be endued with intelligence.  Skin, flesh, blood, fat, bile, marrow, and sinews, and these senses (of both knowledge and action), about which thou wert speaking unto me, exist.  Objects flow from objects; the senses from the senses.  From body one obtains a body, as a seed is obtained from seed.  When the Supreme Being is without senses, without seed, without matter, without body, He must be divested of all attributes! and in consequence of His being so, how, indeed, can He have attributes of any kind?  Space and other attributes arise from the attributes of Sattwa and Rajas and Tamas, and disappear ultimately in them.  Thus the attributes arise from Prakriti.  Skin, flesh, blood, fat, bile, marrow, bones, and sinews,—­these eight that are made of Prakriti, know, O king, may sometimes be produced by the vital seed alone (of the male).  The Jiva-soul and the universe are said to both partake of Prakriti characterised by the three attributes of Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas.  The Supreme Soul is different from both the Jiva-soul and the universe.  As the seasons though unendued with forms, are nevertheless inferred from the appearance of particular fruits and flowers, after the same manner, Prakriti, though formless, is inferred from the attributes of Mahat and the rest that spring from it.  In this way from the existence of Chaitanya in the body, the Supreme Soul, divested of all attributes whatever and perfectly stainless, is inferred.  Without beginning and destruction, without end, the overseer of all things, and auspicious, that Soul, only in consequence of its identifying itself with the body and other attributes, comes to be taken as invested with attributes.  Those persons that are truly conversant with attributes know that only objects endued with attributes can have attributes