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17. But the making of names and forms (belongs) to him who renders tripartite, on account of scriptural teaching.
The Sutras have shown that the creation of the elements and organs in their collective aspect (samashti) and the activity of the individual souls proceed from the highest Self; and they have also further confirmed the view that the rule which the souls exercise over their organs depends on the highest Self. A question now arises with regard to the creation of the world in its discrete aspect (vyashti), which consists in the differentiation of names and forms (i.e. of individual beings). Is this latter creation the work of Hiranyagarbha only, who represents the collective aggregate of all individual souls; or, fundamentally, the work of the highest Brahman having Hiranyagarbha for its body--just as the creation of water e.g. is the work of the highest Brahman having sire for its body?--The Purvapakshin maintains the former alternative. For, he says, the text 'Having entered with this living-soul-self (anena givenat-mana), let me differentiate names and forms' (Kh. Up. VI, 3, 2), declares the giva-soul to be the agent in differentiation. For the resolve of the highest deity is expressed, not in the form 'let me differentiate names and forms by myself (svena rupena), but 'by this soul-self,' i.e. by a part of the highest Self, in the form of the individual soul.--But on this interpretation the first person in 'vyakaravani' (let me enter), and the grammatical form of 'having entered,' which indicates the agent, could not be taken in their literal, but only in an implied, sense--as is the case in a sentence such as 'Having entered the hostile army by means of a spy, I will estimate its strength' (where the real agent is not the king, who is the speaker, but the spy).--The cases are not analogous, the Purvapakshin replies.
For the king and the spy are fundamentally separate, and hence the king is agent by implication only. But in the case under discussion the soul is a part, and hence contributes to constitute the essential nature of, the highest Self; hence that highest Self itself enters and differentiates in the form of the soul. Nor can it be said that the instrumental case ('with this soul-self') has the implied meaning of association ('together with this soul-self'); for if a case can be taken in its primary sense, it is not proper to understand it in a sense which has to be expressed by means of a preposition. But the third case, givena, cannot here be understood even in its primary sense, i.e. that of the instrument of the action; for if Brahman is the agent in the acts of entering and differentiating, the soul is not that which is most suitable to accomplish the end of action (while yet grammar defines the instrumental case--karana--on this basis). Nor can it be said that the activity of the soul comes to an end with the entering, while the differentiation of names and forms is Brahman's work, for the past participle (pravisya) indicates (according to the rules of grammar) that the two actions--of entering and differentiating--belong to the same agent. And although the soul as being a part of the highest Self shares in its nature, yet in order to distinguish it from the highest Self, the text by means of the clause 'with that living Self refers to it as something outward (not of the nature of the Self). The agent in the action of differentiation of names and forms therefore is Hiranyagarbha. Smriti texts also ascribe to him this activity; cp.'he in the beginning made, from the words of the Veda, the names and forms of beings, of the gods and the rest, and of actions.'
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