ed immediately before. For after having
enumerated a series of things in which the subsequent one is always
superior to the one preceding it, it concludes by saying that nothing is
beyond the Person.--We might, however, accept the interpretation just
discussed without damaging our general argumentation; for whichever
explanation we receive, so much remains clear that the Ka/th/aka passage
does not refer to the pradhana.

4. And (the pradhana cannot be meant) because there is no statement as
to (the avyakta) being something to be cognised.

The Sa@nkhyas, moreover, represent the pradhana as something to be
cognised in so far as they say that from the knowledge of the difference
of the constitutive elements of the pradhana and of the soul there
results the desired isolation of the soul. For without a knowledge of
the nature of those constitutive elements it is impossible to cognise
the difference of the soul from them. And somewhere they teach that the
pradhana is to be cognised by him who wishes to attain special
powers.--Now in the passage under discussion the avyakta is not
mentioned as an object of knowledge; we there meet with the mere word
avyakta, and there is no sentence intimating that the avyakta is to be
known or meditated upon. And it is impossible to maintain that a
knowledge of things which (knowledge) is not taught in the text is of
any advantage to man.--For this reason also we maintain that the word
avyakta cannot denote the pradhana.--Our interpretation, on the other
hand, is unobjectionable, since according to it the passage mentions the
body (not as an object of knowledge, but merely) for the purpose of
throwing light on the highest place of Vish/n/u, in continuation of the
simile in which the body had been compared to a chariot.

5. And if you maintain that the text does speak (of the pradhana as an
object of knowledge) we deny that; for the intelligent (highest) Self is
meant, on account of the general subject-matter.

Here the Sa@nkhya raises a new objection, and maintains that the
averment made in the last Sutra is not proved, since the text later on
speaks of the pradhana--which had been referred to as the
Undeveloped--as an object of knowledge. 'He who has perceived that which
is without sound, without touch, without form, without decay, without
taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, beyond
the great and unchangeable, is freed from the jaws of death' (Ka. Up.
II, 3, 15