is understood thereby, it would be improper to assume them to have a different sense; for that would involve the fault of abandoning the direct statements of the text in favour of mere assumptions.  Nor can we conclude the purport of these passages to be the intimation of the nature of agents, divinities, &c. (connected with acts of religious duty); for there are certain scriptural passages which preclude all actions, actors, and fruits, as, for instance, B/ri/.  Up.  II, 4, 13, ‘Then by what should he see whom?’ (which passage intimates that there is neither an agent, nor an object of action, nor an instrument.) Nor again can Brahman, though it is of the nature of an accomplished thing, be the object of perception and the other means of knowledge; for the fact of everything having its Self in Brahman cannot be grasped without the aid of the scriptural passage ‘That art thou’ (Ch.  Up.  VI, 8, 7).  Nor can it rightly be objected that instruction is purportless if not connected with something either to be striven after or shunned; for from the mere comprehension of Brahman’s Self, which is not something either to be avoided or endeavoured after, there results cessation of all pain, and thereby the attainment of man’s highest aim.  That passages notifying certain divinities, and so on, stand in subordinate relation to acts of devout meditation mentioned in the same chapters may readily be admitted.  But it is impossible that Brahman should stand in an analogous relation to injunctions of devout meditation, for if the knowledge of absolute unity has once arisen there exists no longer anything to be desired or avoided, and thereby the conception of duality, according to which we distinguish actions, agents, and the like, is destroyed.  If the conception of duality is once uprooted by the conception of absolute unity, it cannot arise again, and so no longer be the cause of Brahman being looked upon as the complementary object of injunctions of devotion.  Other parts of the Veda may have no authority except in so far as they are connected with injunctions; still it is impossible to impugn on that ground the authoritativeness of passages conveying the knowledge of the Self; for such passages have their own result.  Nor, finally, can the authoritativeness of the Veda be proved by inferential reasoning so that it would be dependent on instances observed elsewhere.  From all which it follows that the Veda possesses authority as a means of right knowledge of Brahman.

Here others raise the following objection:—­Although the Veda is the means of gaining a right knowledge of Brahman, yet it intimates Brahman only as the object of certain injunctions, just as the information which the Veda gives about the sacrificial post, the ahavaniya-fire and other objects not known from the practice of common life is merely supplementary to certain injunctions[69].  Why so?  Because the Veda has the purport of either instigating to action or restraining from it.