n the understanding then overwhelms the Soul itself
that lies over the Rajas-stained understanding like an image upon a
mirror.[1103] It is the mind that first unites in friendship with Rajas.
Having united itself, it seizes the soul, the understanding, and the
senses (like a false minister seizing the king and the citizens after
having conspired with a foe) and makes them over to Rajas (with which it
has united itself).'"'"

SECTION CCLV

"'Bhishma said, "Do thou, O son, O sinless one, listen once more, with
feelings of great pride, to the words that fell from the lips of the
Island-born Rishi on the subject of the enumeration of the entities. Like
unto a blazing fire (for having transcended all ignorance), the great
Rishi said these words unto his son who resembled a fire wrapped in
smoke.[1104] Instructed by what he said, I also, O son, shall again
expound to thee that certain knowledge (which dispels ignorance). The
properties possessed by earth are immobility, weight, hardness,
productiveness, scent, density, capacity to absorb scents of all kinds,
cohesion, habitableness (in respect of vegetables and animals), and that
attribute of the mind which is called patience of the capacity to bear.
The properties of water are coolness, taste, moisture, liquidity,
softness, agreeableness, tongue, fluidity, capacity to be congealed, and
power to melt many earthly products.[1105] The properties of fire are
irresistible energy, inflammability, heat, capacity to soften, light,
sorrow, disease, speed, fury, and invariably upward motion. The
properties of the wind are touch that is neither hot nor cool, capacity
to assist the organ of speech, independence (in respect of motion),
strength, celerity, power to assist all kinds of emission or discharge,
power to raise other objects, breaths inhaled and exhaled, life (as the
attribute of Chit) and birth (including death). The properties of space
are sound, extension, capacity of being enclosed, absence of refuge for
resting upon absence of all necessity for such refuge, status of being
unmanifest, capacity for modification, incapacity for producing
resistance, material cause for producing the sense of hearing, and the
unoccupied portions of the human body. These are the fifty properties, as
declared, that constitute the essence of the five elementary
entities.[1106] Patience, reasoning or disputation, remembrance,
forgetfulness or error, imagination, endurance, propensity towards