the word avyakta which occurs in the text can denote only the subtle body, but not the gross body which is vyakta, i.e. developed or manifest; we invalidate this rejoinder by remarking that the determination of the sense depends on the circumstance of the passages interpreted constituting a syntactical whole.  For if the earlier and the later passage do not form a whole they convey no sense, since that involves the abandonment of the subject started and the taking up of a new subject.  But syntactical unity cannot be established unless it be on the ground of there being a want of a complementary part of speech or sentence.  If you therefore construe the connexion of the passages without having regard to the fact that the latter passage demands as its complement that both bodies (which had been spoken of in the former passage) should be understood as referred to, you destroy all syntactical unity and so incapacitate yourselves from arriving at the true meaning of the text.  Nor must you think that the second passage occupies itself with the subtle body only, for that reason that the latter is not easily distinguished from the Self, while the gross body is easily so distinguished on account of its readily perceived loathsomeness.  For the passage does not by any means refer to such a distinction—­as we conclude from the circumstance of there being no verb enjoining it—­but has for its only subject the highest place of Vish/n/u, which had been mentioned immediately before.  For after having enumerated a series of things in which the subsequent one is always superior to the one preceding it, it concludes by saying that nothing is beyond the Person.—­We might, however, accept the interpretation just discussed without damaging our general argumentation; for whichever explanation we receive, so much remains clear that the Ka/th/aka passage does not refer to the pradhana.

4.  And (the pradhana cannot be meant) because there is no statement as to (the avyakta) being something to be cognised.

The Sa@nkhyas, moreover, represent the pradhana as something to be cognised in so far as they say that from the knowledge of the difference of the constitutive elements of the pradhana and of the soul there results the desired isolation of the soul.  For without a knowledge of the nature of those constitutive elements it is impossible to cognise the difference of the soul from them.  And somewhere they teach that the pradhana is to be cognised by him who wishes to attain special powers.—­Now in the passage under discussion the avyakta is not mentioned as an object of knowledge; we there meet with the mere word avyakta, and there is no sentence intimating that the avyakta is to be known or meditated upon.  And it is impossible to maintain that a knowledge of things which (knowledge) is not taught in the text is of any advantage to man.—­For this reason also we maintain that the word avyakta cannot denote the pradhana.—­Our interpretation, on the other hand, is unobjectionable, since according to it the passage mentions the body (not as an object of knowledge, but merely) for the purpose of throwing light on the highest place of Vish/n/u, in continuation of the simile in which the body had been compared to a chariot.