SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

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164 THE ANALOGIES IN THE GIT A.
38, which we have often quoted.
fire is covered with
smoke, as a mirror with dirt, as an embryo is enclosed in a womb,
so this is covered with it Sarikara explains, a "as
bright fire
is covered with a dark smoke co-existent with it ....so this is
covered with desire.
! The italics are ours. What this and
it are, are seen to be, man and his wisdom-nature, Prakritiguna
Rajas and Desire constraining one to the commission of
sins. Constrained. Sankara explains as a servant by the King.
Man is enslaved by his passion ; his wisdom is such that ft is
deluded by unwisdom, ignorance (verse 40). Sankara leaves
these passages quietly enough but when explaining the similar
passage (xiv, 5) Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, these three Gunas,
O mighty armed, born of Prakriti, bind fast in the body, the
embodied, the indestructible," Sankara says, one may
ask: It has been said that the embodied is not tainted (xiii, 31).
said here that the (Gunas) bind
How then, on the contrary, is it
him ? We have met this objection by adding as it were 1 ;
thus
they bind him as it were ." It would have&een well for his repu
tation, if he had not raised the objection himself and tried to meet
it in the way he has done. Why did not the Omniscient Lord
Krishna himself add this as it were, and leave these passages
alone, apparently contradicting each other. In his explanation,
1
he has omitted the force of fast, and he has forgotten
Dragged and constrained and of the co-existent darkness and
delusion of the former passage and explanation. There is one
other passage relating
namely verse 21 in chapter
to the soul and its bound condition
xiii itself.
Purusha, as seated in
Prakriti, experiences the qualities born of Prakriti} "attachment
to qualities is the cause of his birth in good and evil wombs."
Lo, the Supreme Self, attaching itself to qualities born of
Prakriti, constrained to commit sin, deluded by co-existent
darkness, having to undergo births and deaths, and getting
fettered and seeking salvation, and all this as it were. 1 \ Whzt
a precious excuse would it not prove, this as it were, to the
murderer, the forger, the liar, the thief etc.? Besides, SaVikara
identifies the embodied of verse 5, xiv>
with the * dweller in the