reference to injunctions of actions, but to contain statements about mere (accomplished) things, just as if one were saying ’the earth comprises seven dvipas,’ ‘that king is marching on,’ they would be purportless, because then they could not possibly be connected with something to be shunned or endeavoured after.—­Perhaps it will here be objected that sometimes a mere statement about existent things has a purpose, as, for instance, the affirmation, ‘This is a rope, not a snake,’ serves the purpose of removing the fear engendered by an erroneous opinion, and that so likewise the Vedanta-passages making statements about the non-transmigrating Self, have a purport of their own (without reference to any action), viz. in so far as they remove the erroneous opinion of the Self being liable to transmigration.—­We reply that this might be so if just as the mere hearing of the true nature of the rope dispels the fear caused by the imagined snake, so the mere hearing of the true nature of Brahman would dispel the erroneous notion of one’s being subject to transmigration.  But this is not the case; for we observe that even men to whom the true nature of Brahman has been stated continue to be affected by pleasure, pain, and the other qualities attaching to the transmigratory condition.  Moreover, we see from the passage, Bri.  Up.  II, 4, 5, ’The Self is to be heard, to be considered, to be reflected upon,’ that consideration and reflection have to follow the mere hearing.  From all this it results that the sastra can be admitted as a means of knowing Brahman in so far only as the latter is connected with injunctions.

To all this, we, the Vedantins, make the following reply:—­The preceding reasoning is not valid, on account of the different nature of the fruits of actions on the one side, and of the knowledge of Brahman on the other side.  The enquiry into those actions, whether of body, speech, or mind, which are known from Sruti and Sm/ri/ti, and are comprised under the name ‘religious duty’ (dharma), is carried on in the Jaimini Sutra, which begins with the words ‘then therefore the enquiry into duty;’ the opposite of duty also (adharma), such as doing harm, &c., which is defined in the prohibitory injunctions, forms an object of enquiry to the end that it may be avoided.  The fruits of duty, which is good, and its opposite, which is evil, both of which are defined by original Vedic statements, are generally known to be sensible pleasure and pain, which make themselves felt to body, speech, and mind only, are produced by the contact of the organs of sense with the objects, and affect all animate beings from Brahman down to a tuft of grass.  Scripture, agreeing with observation, states that there are differences in the degree of pleasure of all embodied creatures from men upward to Brahman.  From those differences it is inferred that there are differences in the degrees of the merit acquired by actions in accordance with religious duty; therefrom again are inferred differences