the case in such phrases as 'the village is being
approached' (where we necessarily have to supply 'by Devadatta or
somebody else').

16. (He whose work is this is Brahman), because (the 'work') denotes the
world.

In the Kaushitaki-brahma/n/a, in the dialogue of Balaki and
Ajata/s/atru, we read, 'O Balaki, he who is the maker of those persons,
he of whom this is the work, he alone is to be known' (Kau. Up. IV, 19).
The question here arises whether what is here inculcated as the object
of knowledge is the individual soul or the chief vital air or the
highest Self.

The purvapakshin maintains that the vital air is meant. For, in the
first place, he says, the clause 'of whom this is the work' points to
the activity of motion, and that activity rests on the vital air. In the
second place, we meet with the word 'pra/n/a' in a complementary passage
('Then he becomes one with that pra/n/a alone'), and that word is well
known to denote the vital air. In the third place, pra/n/a is the maker
of all the persons, the person in the sun, the person in the moon, &c.,
who in the preceding part of the dialogue had been enumerated by Balaki;
for that the sun and the other divinities are mere differentiations of
pra/n/a we know from another scriptural passage, viz. 'Who is that one
god (in whom all the other gods are contained)? Pra/n/a and he is
Brahman, and they call him That' (B/ri/. Up. III, 9, 9).--Or else, the
purvapakshin continues, the passage under discussion represents the
individual soul as the object of knowledge. For of the soul also it can
be said that 'this is the work,' if we understand by 'this' all
meritorious and non-meritorious actions; and the soul also, in so far as
it is the enjoyer, can be viewed as the maker of the persons enumerated
in so far as they are instrumental to the soul's fruition. The
complementary passage, moreover, contains an inferential mark of the
individual soul. For Ajata/s/atru, in order to instruct Balaki about the
'maker of the persons' who had been proposed as the object of knowledge,
calls a sleeping man by various names and convinces Balaki, by the
circumstance that the sleeper does not hear his shouts, that the pra/n/a
and so on are not the enjoyers; he thereupon wakes the sleeping man by
pushing him with his stick, and so makes Balaki comprehend that the
being capable of fruition is the individual soul which is distinct from
the pra/n/a. A subsequent passage also contains an inferent