8.  ’The subtle old path (i.e. the path of knowledge on which final release is reached; which path is subtle, i.e. difficult to know, and old, i.e. to be known from the eternal Veda) has been obtained and fully reached by me.  On it the sages who know Brahman reach final release (svargaloka/s/abda/h/ samnihitaprakara/n/at mokshabhidhayaka/h/).

9.  ’On that path they say that there is white or blue or yellow or green or red (i.e. others maintain that the path to final release is, in accordance with the colour of the arteries, either white or blue, &c.; but that is false, for the paths through the arteries lead at the best to the world of Brahman, which itself forms part of the sa/m/sara); that path (i.e. the only path to release, viz. the path of true knowledge) is found by Brahman, i.e. by such Brahma/n/as as through true knowledge have become like Brahman,’ &c.

A significant instance in truth of the straits to which thorough-going systematisers of the Upanishads see themselves reduced occasionally!

But we return to the point which just now chiefly interests us.  Whether Sa@nkara’s interpretation of the chapter, and especially of section 6, be right or wrong, so much is certain that we are not entitled to view all those texts which speak of the soul going to the world of Brahman as belonging to the so-called lower knowledge, because a few other passages declare that the sage does not go to Brahman.  The text which declares the sage free from desires to become one with Brahman could not, without due discrimination, be used to define and limit the meaning of other passages met with in the same Upanishad even—­for as we have remarked above the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka contains pieces manifestly belonging to different stages of development;—­much less does it entitle us to put arbitrary constructions on passages forming part of other Upanishads.  Historically the disagreement of the various accounts is easy to understand.  The older notion was that the soul of the wise man proceeds along the path of the gods to Brahman’s abode.  A later—­and, if we like, more philosophic—­conception is that, as Brahman already is a man’s Self, there is no need of any motion on man’s part to reach Brahman.  We may even apply to those two views the terms apara and para—­lower and higher—­knowledge.  But we must not allow any commentator to induce us to believe that what he from his advanced standpoint looks upon as an inferior kind of cognition, was viewed in the same light by the authors of the Upanishads.

We turn to another Upanishad text likewise touching upon the point considered in what precedes, viz. the second Brahma/n/a of the third adhyaya of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka.  The discussion there first turns upon the grahas and atigrahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects, and Yajnavalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is overcome, is itself overcome by water; for death