s the words
red, white, and black are common to both passages, and as these words
primarily denote special colours and can be applied to the Sa@nkhya
gu/n/as in a secondary sense only. That passages whose sense is beyond
doubt are to be used for the interpretation of doubtful passages, is a
generally acknowledged rule. As we therefore find that in the
/S/veta/s/vatara--after the general topic has been started in I, 1, 'The
Brahman-students say, Is Brahman the cause?'--the text, previous to the
passage under discussion, speaks of a power of the highest Lord which
arranges the whole world ('the Sages devoted to meditation and
concentration have seen the power belonging to God himself, hidden in
its own qualities'); and as further that same power is referred to in
two subsequent complementary passages ('Know then, Prak/ri/ti is Maya,
and the great Lord he who is affected with Maya;' 'who being one only
rules over every germ;' IV, 10, 11); it cannot possibly be asserted that
the mantra treating of the aja refers to some independent causal matter
called pradhana. We rather assert, on the ground of the general
subject-matter, that the mantra describes the same divine power referred
to in the other passages, in which names and forms lie unevolved, and
which we assume as the antecedent condition of that state of the world
in which names and forms are evolved. And that divine power is
represented as three-coloured, because its products, viz. fire, water,
and earth, have three distinct colours.--But how can we maintain, on the
ground of fire, water, and earth having three colours, that the causal
matter is appropriately called a three-coloured aja? if we consider, on
the one hand, that the exterior form of the genus aja (i.e. goat) does
not inhere in fire, water, and earth; and, on the other hand, that
Scripture teaches fire, water, and earth to have been produced, so that
the word aja cannot be taken in the sense 'non-produced[234].'--To this
question the next Sutra replies.

10. And on account of the statement of the assumption (of a metaphor)
there is nothing contrary to reason (in aja denoting the causal matter);
just as in the case of honey (denoting the sun) and similar cases.

The word aja neither expresses that fire, water, and earth belong to the
goat species, nor is it to be explained as meaning 'unborn;' it rather
expresses an assumption, i.e. it intimates the assumption of the source
of all beings (which source compr