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Av., x, 2, 8 c, d, and 26 c, d, taken together, read: Citvā cityaṁ hanvoḥ puruṣasya divaṁ ruroha hatamaḥ sa devaḥ? Atharvā … mastiṣkād ūrdhvaḥ prerayat pavamāno'dhi śīrṣatas, literally, “Who is that God who, having piled a piling in the Person's jaws, ascends to the sky? Atharvan … the Purifier, sent (them) forth upward from the brain, from the head.” What is “piled” and what “sent forth”?
page 105 note 1 Cf. my “Atmayajña: Self-sacrifice” in HJAS., vi, 1942, p. 378, note 56Google Scholar.
page 106 note 1 On “winnowing” cf. my “Sunkiss” in JAOS., 60, 1940, p. 48, note 10Google Scholar. Here the Fire-priest (Atharvan) and Winnower (Purifier, καθαρτής of the soul, as in Sophist, 231 E) may well be the Breath “in the mouth” of BU., i, 3, 7 f., who frees the powers of the soul from evil and death, and translates (atyavahat) them, as the Fire, as missal priest, transmits to the Gods whatever is offered up in him. It is the more easy to think of an altar-fire piled in the mouth (instead of as more usually in the heart) because, of all the powers of the soul, it is the Voice that most immediately represents Agni: “Fire, becoming Voice, entered the mouth” (AA., ii, 4, 2), “Agni is the Voice” (SB., iii, 2, 2, 13). For the mouth as a sacrificial hearth cf. BU., i, 4, 6, and for the tongue as cribble RV., iv, 11, 2, and (implied) x, 71, 2.
page 106 note 2 Ḵṛ, to “make”; here, as not infrequently in the vernacular, erotic sense, which is only an extension of the sense of the word in “make friends”. It is a commonplace that whatever the Voice may utter that has not been fathered by (abhigata, etc.) the Mind is nonsense. Cf. my Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government, pp. 7, 12, 13.
page 106 note 3 “Imprinted” is one of Griffith's happiest renderings. “Signs,” of course, are signatures and significations; pure signs are words correctly used, adequate symbols and images of their referents. That there are others who can only approach the Voice in sin (verse 9) reminds us of Plato's “Falsity in words is a reflection of sickness in the soul” (Republic, 382 C, cf. Phædrus, 260 E, Theætetus, 168 C), and of the similar saying of Mencius, for whom (ii, 1, 11) the misuse of words … is not to be set right merely by a glance in a dictionary, or even by a course in the theory of interpretation, but by a rectification of the whole personality” (Richards, I. A., Mencius on the Mind, 1932, p. 35)Google Scholar.
page 107 note 1 In many details as well as in form and substance. For example, the “victory of AV., x, 2,6 is the victory that was won by Brahma for the Gods in Kena Up., iii, 1. I note some other correspondences as follows: 6, “Who bored the openings in the head?” is answered by “Svayambhū” in Kaṭha Up., iv, 1: 27, “Breath defends” (prāṇo abhi rakṣati) corresponds to BU., iv, 3, 12, prāṇena rakṣan; the explanation of puruṣa in 30 (that man is a city indwelt by God) recurs in BU., ii, 5, 18. The Ppp. version of 25a, brahmaṇā bhūmir niyatā implies the sūtrātman doctrine, and is the exact equivalent of Dante's, questi la terra in se stringe (Paradiso, i, 117)Google Scholar, a concept that has also a long history in Europe, going back to Theaetetus, 153, and Iliad, viii, 18 f.
page 107 note 2 “Mind is the swiftest of fliers” (RV., vi, 9, 5). The metaphor, possibly of archery, is probably of falconry, as in RV., ix, 77, 2, where “the celestial Falcon let fly through space (śyeno … iṣitas tiro rajas) wrings Soma's neck” (it must be understood that “Soma was Vṛtra”, as in ŚB., iv, 4, 3, 4): cf. RV., i, 118, 11 and iv, 27. Positive evidence for falconry can be cited in the word śyenajīvin, Mānavadharmaśāstra, iii, 164.
page 107 note 3 Prāṇaḥ prathamaḥ- “Mind is the first of the breaths” (mano hi prathamam prāṇanām, ŚB., x, 5, 3, 7). Hence the sense is, “By whom let fly, by whom flown forth, by whom yoked, does the Mind, the primal Breath, fly forth?”
page 107 note 4 The answer immediately implied is Brahma, but any form of the Sun could be cited, e.g. Savitṛ (TS., iv, 1, 1), or Prajāpati (MU., ii, 6d).
page 107 note 5 Buddhist, “Who's cleansed, released, who bound, and with what self does he reach the Brahma-world?” (Ko sujjhati muccati bajjhatī ca, ken'attanā brahmalokaṁ gacchati, Sn. 508): “with self that's Brahma-become” (brahma-bhūtena attanā, A., ii, 211); “the Buddhas, Brahma-become” (brahma-bhūta … buddhā, S., iii, 83); “such is the cleanness of the Yakkha” (Sn., 875, 876), i.e. the BrahmaYakṣa of AV., x, 2, 32 and x, 8, 43 and Kena Up., iii, 1 f.
page 108 note 1 Transitive, with accusative of that which is released!
page 108 note 2 “The very Breath, the prescient Spirit (Self) of all beings” (sarveṣām bhūtānām prāṇam-eva, prajñātmānam, Kauṣītalci Up., ii, 9); “Brahma,” BU., iv, 4, 18; “The Lord of mind, i.e. of all minds, “Śaṅkarācārya on Vedānta Sūtra, iv, 4, 18.
page 108 note 3 yoyam āyasmā evaṁnāmo evaṁgotto = bhārahāro = puggalo, S., iii, 25, 26.
page 108 note 4 “Thinking (in terms of subject and object) cannot be the highest good. Therefore Mind (νους = manas), if it be the Master Mind that we are speaking of, thinks nothing but itself [as Brahma ātmānam avet, BU., i, 4, 10], and its thinking is the ‘Thinking of thinking’” (νοήσεως νόησις, Aristotle, Metaphysics, xii, 9, 1074 b 33–35). “When intellect attains to the form of Truth, it does not think, but perfectly contemplates the Truth” (Aquinas, St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., i, 34, 1 and 2)Google Scholar. The Mind of God, that is, is the principle of thinking; its act is one of being, without distinction of knower from known (cf. BU., iv, 5, 15), not the act of thinking of contingent things. The ego demonstrated by Descartes' Cogito ergo sum (a phrase that represents the nadir of European metaphysics) is nothing but a fatally determined process, and by no means our real Self.
page 108 note 5 “Verily, there is none but the Lord that transmigrates” (satyaṁ, neśvarād anyaḥ saṁsārī, Śaṅkarācārya on Vedānta Sūtra, i, 1, 5), a proposition for which the older texts afford ample support.
page 109 note 1 “From the skull” is regularly the Spirit's place of exit, as it was of its entrance, that ray which pierces the bregmatic fontanel (brahmarandhra) leading upward directly to the Sundoor (Ait. Up., iii, 11; Taitt. Up., i, 6; MU., iv, 6, etc.).