The Bhagavat-Geeta, or dialogues of Krishna and Arjoon ... Sanscrit, Canarese, and English ... / The Sanscrit text from Schlegel's edition ; the Canarese newly translated from the Sanscrit ; the English translation by Sir C. Wilkins, with his preface and notes ... and the introduction, by ... Warren Hastings ... With ... additional notes from Prof. Wilson, Rev. H. Milman, etc. ; and an Essay ... by Baron W. von Humboldt, translated ... by ... G.H. Weigle : the second ed. of Schlegel's Latin version ... with the Sanscrit text revised by Prof. Lassen, etc. Edited by ... J. Garrett.

Date:: 1849

Credit: The Bhagavat-Geeta, or dialogues of Krishna and Arjoon ... Sanscrit, Canarese, and English ... / The Sanscrit text from Schlegel's edition ; the Canarese newly translated from the Sanscrit ; the English translation by Sir C. Wilkins, with his preface and notes ... and the introduction, by ... Warren Hastings ... With ... additional notes from Prof. Wilson, Rev. H. Milman, etc. ; and an Essay ... by Baron W. von Humboldt, translated ... by ... G.H. Weigle : the second ed. of Schlegel's Latin version ... with the Sanscrit text revised by Prof. Lassen, etc. Edited by ... J. Garrett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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i The man who realizes this is pronounced free from the taint of sin, and remaineth like the leaf of the lotus unaffected by the waters. Y. 10. It is difficult to find passages of equal subli- mity in any work on Hindoo philosophy, to which we have access. Narud, in the Bedang, is repre- sented as interrogating Brahma on the nature of the intellect. “What dost thou mean 0 Father by intellect? ” Brahma. “ It is a portion of the great soul of the universe, breathed into all creatures to animate them for a certain time.” Narttd. “What becomes of it after death?” Brahma. “ It animates other bodies or returns like a drop into that unbounded ocean from which it arose.” “ When the yogee renounces all assistance from the understanding and remains without the exer- cise of thought he is identified with Brahma, and remains as the pure glass when the shadow has left it.” (Vedu-vasu) To a yogee says Kupuli—• in whose mind all things are identified as spirit what is infatuation? what is grief? He sees all things as one, he is destitute of affections, he neither rejoices in good nor is offended with evil.” The Greeks and Romans speculated on the im- materiality, incorruptness, and eternity of the soul. These were questions forced upon their notice by the very instincts and misgivings of their nature; but their illustrations are clogged by argumenta- tive and rigorous habits of thought. The regions familiar to an oriental wing, they seem not to have reached. The brevity and impressiveness of Krishna’s description of man’s nobler part, we have in vain striven to match, out of their writ- ings. Plato as translated by Cicero, in his first Tusculan, gives to the human soul the attributes of the Divine Being, and supposes it to have been from Eternity, uncreated and self existent. His words are heavy and unenticing, though doctri- nally important. Speaking of the principle of motion, or the soul; he says “principii autem nulla est origo, nam e principio oriuntur omnia—ipsum autem nulla ex re alia nasci potest; nec enim esset id principium quod gigneretur aliunde. Id autem nec nasci potest, nec mori.” (Cap. 2, 3.) In this passage and in others, the immortality of the soul. is not supposed to arise from any foreign or exter- nal cause, but is resolved into the natural and inhe- rent powers of the SOul itself. ineihr/ <Se dyevvmov xa) ahioapOopov oluto dvdyxtj eivai—tovto he ovre dTToAAvoOai ovts yiyveoOai hvvarov, e£ dvdyxr]q dyevvtjrov, re xai d0d.va.7ov dveitj. The energy of Aristotle, was a word of mighty import, in that author’s philosophy, since his doctrine on that subject is a link in the grand chain, by which he connects earth with heaven, and mortals with the deity. As such it corresponds to the action discoursed on in the slokas, cited above. “Energy refers to action, and that is said to exist in energy, which executes its peculiar work, or performs its peculiar functions. The state of energy is the most perfect state of existence in which any object can be exhibited. Though energy always implies action, yet all actions are not energies. The kind of life, which the best and happiest men lead occasionally in the unobstructed exercise of their highest powers, be- longs eternally to God, in a degree that should excite admiration in proportion as it surpasses comprehension.” (Gillies’ Arist. I. 153, 155.) This regard of the consequences of actions was taught by Zeno and his disciples with an autho- rative earnestness resembling that of Krishna. “Nevertheless they seem to have been all of this persuasion that the frightening of men with punish- ments after death was no proper or accommodate means to promote virtue, because that ought to be pursued after for its own sake, or the good of honesty, as vice to be avoided for that evil of tur- pitude which is in it, and not for any other external evil consequent thereupon.” (Cud. II. 26.) We do not doubt that the constitution of man is made up of material and spiritual properties; that he consists of a body and of a soul. His outer frame is the organized machine of an immaterial principle. For the notion that mind is the effect of the physiology and structure of the body, and is not separable from it, we have but the utmost abhorrence. The soul we hold to be superadded to its perishable and earthly vehicle; and that it is consequently capable of an existence independent on it. Shape, solidity, extension, magnitude, are the cognizable properties of the one. Conscious- ness, volition, reason, memory, the descriptive phenomena of the other. They are alike known only by their qualities: the one by such as are re- cognized by bodily senses, the other by such as are discerned by individual consciousness. Every atom Z 2

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