colour the colour of earth,’ &c.  Now those three elements—­fire, water, and earth—­we recognise in the Sveta/s/vatara passage, as the words red, white, and black are common to both passages, and as these words primarily denote special colours and can be applied to the Sa@nkhya gu/n/as in a secondary sense only.  That passages whose sense is beyond doubt are to be used for the interpretation of doubtful passages, is a generally acknowledged rule.  As we therefore find that in the Sveta/s/vatara—­after the general topic has been started in I, 1, ’The Brahman-students say, Is Brahman the cause?’—­the text, previous to the passage under discussion, speaks of a power of the highest Lord which arranges the whole world (’the Sages devoted to meditation and concentration have seen the power belonging to God himself, hidden in its own qualities’); and as further that same power is referred to in two subsequent complementary passages (’Know then, Prak/ri/ti is Maya, and the great Lord he who is affected with Maya;’ ’who being one only rules over every germ;’ IV, 10, 11); it cannot possibly be asserted that the mantra treating of the aja refers to some independent causal matter called pradhana.  We rather assert, on the ground of the general subject-matter, that the mantra describes the same divine power referred to in the other passages, in which names and forms lie unevolved, and which we assume as the antecedent condition of that state of the world in which names and forms are evolved.  And that divine power is represented as three-coloured, because its products, viz. fire, water, and earth, have three distinct colours.—­But how can we maintain, on the ground of fire, water, and earth having three colours, that the causal matter is appropriately called a three-coloured aja? if we consider, on the one hand, that the exterior form of the genus aja (i.e. goat) does not inhere in fire, water, and earth; and, on the other hand, that Scripture teaches fire, water, and earth to have been produced, so that the word aja cannot be taken in the sense ’non-produced[234].’—­To this question the next Sutra replies.

10.  And on account of the statement of the assumption (of a metaphor) there is nothing contrary to reason (in aja denoting the causal matter); just as in the case of honey (denoting the sun) and similar cases.

The word aja neither expresses that fire, water, and earth belong to the goat species, nor is it to be explained as meaning ‘unborn;’ it rather expresses an assumption, i.e. it intimates the assumption of the source of all beings (which source comprises fire, water, and earth), being compared to a she-goat.  For as accidentally some she-goat might be partly red, partly white, partly black, and might have many young goats resembling her in colour, and as some he-goat might love her and lie by her, while some other he-goat might leave her after having enjoyed her; so the universal causal matter which