hould have to admit an effect
without a cause. Nor have we the right to assume potentialities of
different kind (for the different periods of the world). Hence, although
the series of worlds from the earth upwards, and the series of different
classes of animate beings such as gods, animals, and men, and the
different conditions based on caste, a/s/rama, religious duty and fruit
(of works), although all these we say are again and again interrupted
and thereupon produced anew; we yet have to understand that they are, in
the beginningless sa/m/sara, subject to a certain determinateness
analogous to the determinateness governing the connexion between the
senses and their objects. For it is impossible to imagine that the
relation of senses and sense-objects should be a different one in
different creations, so that, for instance, in some new creation a sixth
sense and a corresponding sixth sense-object should manifest themselves.
As, therefore, the phenomenal world is the same in all kalpas and as the
Lords are able to continue their previous forms of existence, there
manifest themselves, in each new creation, individuals bearing the same
names and forms as the individuals of the preceding creations, and,
owing to this equality of names and forms, the admitted periodical
renovations of the world in the form of general pralayas and general
creations do not conflict with the authoritativeness of the word of the
Veda. The permanent identity of names and forms is declared in /S/ruti
as well as Sm/ri/ti; compare, for instance, /Ri/k. Sa/m/h. X, 190, 3,
'As formerly the creator ordered sun and moon, and the sky, and the air,
and the heavenly world;' which passage means that the highest Lord
arranged at the beginning of the present kalpa the entire world with sun
and moon, and so on, just as it had been arranged in the preceding
kalpa. Compare also Taitt. Brahm. III, 1, 4, 1, 'Agni desired: May I
become the consumer of the food of the gods; for that end he offered a
cake on eight potsherds to Agni and the K/ri/ttikas.' This passage,
which forms part of the injunction of the ish/t/i to the Nakshatras,
declares equality of name and form connecting the Agni who offered and
the Agni to whom he offered.[206]

Sm/ri/ti also contains similar statements to be quoted here; so, for
instance, 'Whatever were the names of the /ri/shis and their powers to
see the Vedas, the same the Unborn one again gives to them when they are
produced afresh at