CHAPTER XXXVI.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Description of the Supreme Deity Parameswara.
Argument.—Description of god as the Producer of all, and present in every form; his purity from his intangibleness and his great grandeur.
THE god added:—Know now the lord god Rudra, who in the form of one self-same intellect, is situated within every form of being, as is of the nature of self-conscious (Swanubhiati) in every one.
2. He is the seed of seeds, and the pith and marrow of the course of nature; know it also as the agent of all actions, and the pure gist of the intellect also.
3. He is the pure cause of all causes, without any cause of himself; he is the producer and sustainer of all, without being produced or supported himself by another.
4. He is the sensation of all sensible beings, and the sense of all sensitive things; he is the sensibility of all sensuous objects, and the highest object of our sensuousness, and the source of endless varieties.
5. He is the pure light of all lights (of the sight, luminaries &c.), and yet invisible by all of them. He is the increate and supernatural light, the source of all sources of light and the great mass of the light of Intellect.
6. He is no positive (or material) existence, but the real (or essential) entity; he is all quiet and beyond the common acceptations of reality and unreality (Being no absolute or relative entity or non-entity). And among the positive ideas of the great entity &c. (mahásattwádi), know him as the Intellect alone and no other. (Many kinds of Entities are enumerated in Indian philosophy, such as:—[Sanskrit: matyena chávahárikena | satyena prátibha sikenábasthátva yena] Again [Sanskrit: mahásatta, jagat satta, ádisattá karana vyáktatasattá])
7. He becomes the colour, colouring and colouror; He becomes as high as the lofty sky, and as low as the lowly hut. (The colour—rága means the passion and feelings also; and the sky and hut mean the empty space and decorated cottage).
8. There are in the expanded mind of this Intellect millions of worlds like sands in the desert, likewise many of these like blossoms of trees, have blown away, others are full blown, and many more will come to blow here after.
9. It is ever burning, as an inextinguishable flame by its own inherent fire; and though it is ever emitting innumerable sparks of its essence all about, yet there is no end of its light and heat and fire.
10. It contains in its bowels the great mountains, likening the particles of dust (or rather as the roes of a fish); it covers also the highest mountains, as the lofty sky hides the dusts on earth. So the sruti—Greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest. [Sanskrit: aníraníyan mahatimahiyát]
11. It comprehends the great—mahákalpa millennium, like a twinkling of the eye; and is also contained in a kalpa age, in its quick motion of a twinkling. (i.e. He is eternity as well as jot of time).
12. Though minuter than the point of a hair, yet it encompasses the whole earth (as its boundary line); and the seven oceans that encircle the earth with their vests, cannot gird the great Infinity.
13. He is called the great creator of the universe, though he creates nothing (Like the makers of other things); and though he does all actions, yet he remains as doing nothing (by his calm quietness).
14. Though the deity is included under the category of substance, yet he is no substance at all; and though there be no substantiality in him, yet his spirit is the substratum of all things. (All along he is the figure of vaiparitya or opposition, which well applies to Brahma who is all and nil or the omnium et nullum, Sarvamasarvam. (Though bodiless, he is the great body of the universe corpus mundi—viswarúpa or virát).)
15. He is adya—(hodie) today, and prátar—practer tomorrow, and though the preter and future, yet he is always present. Wherefore he is neither now or then, but sempiternal and for ever.
16. He is not in the babbling and prattling of babes and boys, nor in the bawling of beasts and brutes, nor in the jargon of savages; but equally understood by all in their peculiar modes of speech. (This is the interpretation of the gloss; but the words of the text are unintelligible and meaningless).
17. These words are meaningless and are yet true, like the obsolete words occurring in the vedas. Therefore no words can truly express what is God, because they are not what he is (but mere emblems). These difficult passages are not explained in the gloss and left out in the Calcutta edition.
18. I bow down to him who is all, in whom all reside and from whom they all proceed, and who is in all place and time, and who is diffused through all and called the one and all—to pan.
19. In this verbiology of obscure words, there will be found some fully expressive of the meaning, as in a forest of thick wood we happen to fragrant flowers, which we pluck and bear with us in handfuls. (The entangled phraseology of the stanza will bear no literal translation).