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ANUGITA
CHAPTER VI
Page1
The Brahmana said : On this, too, they relate this ancient story. Learn now of what description is the institution of the ten sacrificial priests 1. The ear 2, the tongue, the nose, the two feet, the two hands, speech, the genital organ, and the anus, these, verity, are ten sacrificial priests, O beautiful one! Sound, touch, colour, and taste, smell, words, action, motion, and the discharge of semen, urine, and excrement, these are the ten oblations. The quarters, wind, sun, moon, earth and fire, and Vishnu also, Indra, Pragapati, and Mitra, these, O beautiful one! are the ten fires 3. The ten organs are the makers of the offering; the offerings are ten, O beautiful one! Objects of sense, verily, are the fuel; and they are offered up into the ten fires. The mind is the ladle 4; and the wealth is the pure, highest knowledge} 5. (Thus) we have heard, was the universe duly divided 6. And the mind, which is the instrument of knowledge, requires everything knowable 7 (as its offering). The mind is within the body the upholder of the frame, and the knower is the upholder of the body 8. That 9 upholder of the body is the Garhapatya fire; from that another is produced, and the mind which is the Ahavaniya; and into this the offering is thrown. Then the lord of speech was produced 10; that (lord of speech) looks up to the mind. First, verily, are words produced; and the mind runs after them.
Footnotes :
1. Cf. Taittiriya-brahmana, and Aranyaka.
2. Cf. Brihadaranyaka. The reading in the printed edition of Bombay is defective here.
3. See seq., where all this is more fully explained. And cf. the analogous Buddhistic doctrine stated at Lalita Vistara (Translation by Dr. R. Mitra).
4. See Taittiriya-aranyaka loc. cit., and cf. Gita. 'The wealth' probably means the Dakshina to be given to the priests, which is mentioned at Gita.
5. The 'priests' here being the senses, the knowledge would accrue to them, as to which cf. Gita.
6. See note 3.
7. Each sense can only offer up its own perceptions--the mind offers up all knowledge whatever.
8. Arguna Misra says this is an implied simile, the mind is an upholder of the body as the, 'knower' or self is.
9. Arguna Misra says this means 'the mind.' I think it better to take it here as the self (supra), to which the 'mind' and the 'other,' mentioned further on, would be subordinate; the 'other' Arguna Misra renders by the 'group of the senses.' The senses are compared to fires at Gita. The passage at Taittiriya-aranyaka above cited refers only to the Garhapatya and Ahavaniya fires. Nilakantha's text and explanation of this passage are, to my mind, not nearly so satisfactory as Arguna Misra's.
10. In the Taittiriya-brahmana and Aranyaka loc. cit., the equivalent of the original word for 'lord of speech' here occurs, viz. Vakpati for Vakaspati here; but that is there described as the Hotri priest, and speech itself as the Vedi or altar. The commentator there interprets 'lord of speech' to mean the wind which causes vocal activity, and resides in the throat, palate, &c. As to mind and speech, see also Khandogya, and comments of Sankara there. The meaning of this passage, however, is not by any means clear to my mind. The Dasahotri mantras in the Taittiriya are stated to be the mantras of the Ishti, or sacrifice, performed by Pragapati for creation. It is possible, then, that the meaning here is, that speech which is to be learnt by the pupil, as stated further on--namely, the Vedas--was first produced from that Ishti (cf. Kulluka on Manu I, 21). But to understand that speech, mind is necessary; hence it is said to look up to the mind. The Brahmana's, wife, however, seems to understand speech as ordinary speech, hence her question.
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