hat which is made--by the term
'work.'--We may indeed admit that the world also is not the previous
topic of discussion and has not been mentioned before; still, as no
specification is mentioned, we conclude that the term 'work' has to be
understood in a general sense, and thus denotes what first presents
itself to the mind, viz. everything which exists in general. It is,
moreover, not true that the world is not the previous topic of
discussion; we are rather entitled to conclude from the circumstance
that the various persons (in the sun, the moon, &c.) which constitute a
part of the world had been specially mentioned before, that the passage
in question is concerned with the whole world in general. The
conjunction 'or' (in 'or he of whom,' &c.) is meant to exclude the idea
of limited makership; so that the whole passage has to be interpreted as
follows, 'He who is the maker of those persons forming a part of the
world, or rather--to do away with this limitation--he of whom this
entire world without any exception is the work.' The special mention
made of the persons having been created has for its purpose to show that
those persons whom Balaki had proclaimed to be Brahman are not Brahman.
The passage therefore sets forth the maker of the world in a double
aspect, at first as the creator of a special part of the world and
thereupon as the creator of the whole remaining part of the world; a way
of speaking analogous to such every-day forms of expression as, 'The
wandering mendicants are to be fed, and then the Brahma/n/as[242].' And
that the maker of the world is the highest Lord is affirmed in all
Vedanta-texts.

17. If it be said that this is not so, on account of the inferential
marks of the individual soul and the chief vital air; we reply that that
has already been explained.

It remains for us to refute the objection that on account of the
inferential marks of the individual soul and the chief vital air, which
are met with in the complementary passage, either the one or the other
must be meant in the passage under discussion, and not the highest
Lord.--We therefore remark that that objection has already been disposed
of under I, 1, 31. There it was shown that from an interpretation
similar to the one here proposed by the purvapakshin there would result
a threefold meditation one having Brahman for its object, a second one
directed on the individual soul, and a third one connected with the
chief vital air. Now the