the form of the Self of breath it abides in the Selfs of all beings.—­On this latter explanation (according to which the passage, ‘Fire is his head,’ &c., does not describe the nature of the highest Lord, and can therefore not be referred to in the Sutra) the declaration as to the Lord being the ‘nature’ of all which is contained in the passage, ’The Person is all this, sacrifice,’ &c., must be taken as the reason for establishing the highest Lord, (i.e. as the passage which, according to the Sutra, proves that the source of all beings is the highest Lord[152].)

24.  Vai/s/vanara (is the highest Lord) on account of the distinction qualifying the common terms (Vai/s/vanara and Self).

(In Ch.  Up.  V, 11 ff.) a discussion begins with the words, ’What is our Self, what is Brahman?’ and is carried on in the passage, ’You know at present that Vai/s/vanara Self, tell us that;’ after that it is declared with reference to Heaven, sun, air, ether, water, and earth, that they are connected with the qualities of having good light, &c., and, in order to disparage devout meditation on them singly, that they stand to the Vai/s/vanara in the relation of being his head, &c., merely; and then finally (V, 18) it is said, ’But he who meditates on the Vai/s/vanara Self as measured by a span, as abhivimana[153], he eats food in all worlds, in all beings, in all Selfs.  Of that Vai/s/vanara Self the head is Sutejas (having good light), the eye Vi/s/varupa (multiform), the breath P/ri/thagvartman (moving in various courses), the trunk Bahula (full), the bladder Rayi (wealth), the feet the earth, the chest the altar, the hairs the grass on the altar, the heart the Garhapatya fire, the mind the Anvaharya fire, the mouth the Ahavaniya fire.’—­Here the doubt arises whether by the term ‘Vai/s/vanara’ we have to understand the gastric fire, or the elemental fire, or the divinity presiding over the latter, or the embodied soul, or the highest Lord.—­But what, it may be asked, gives rise to this doubt?—­The circumstance, we reply, of ‘Vai/s/vanara’ being employed as a common term for the gastric fire, the elemental fire, and the divinity of the latter, while ‘Self’ is a term applying to the embodied soul as well as to the highest Lord.  Hence the doubt arises which meaning of the term is to be accepted and which to be set aside.

Which, then, is the alternative to be embraced?—­Vai/s/vanara, the purvapakshin maintains, is the gastric fire, because we meet, in some passages, with the term used in that special sense; so, for instance (B/ri/.  Up.  V, 9), ’Agni Vai/s/vanara is the fire within man by which the food that is eaten is cooked.’—­Or else the term may denote fire in general, as we see it used in that sense also; so, for instance (Rig-veda Sa/m/h.  X, 88, 12), ’For the whole world the gods have made the Agni Vai/s/vanara a sign of the days.’  Or, in the third place, the word may denote that divinity whose body is fire.  For passages in which the term has that sense are