Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    b. the personal individual soul of living beings, called Jivatman. If any entity is eternal it can have had no beginning or it must have an end. Hence souls both supreme and individual, whether they be regarded as different or identical, have always existed and must ever exist. 2. The eternity of the matter or substance out of which the universe has been evolved. Note that this evolution may take place, according to some materialists, from gross particles of matter; or, as in the ortho- dox Vedanta system, immediately from soul itself. This is a result of that fixed dogma of a Hindu philosopher’s belief—nd- vastuno vastusiddhih, ex nihilo nihil fit,—nothing can be pro- duced out of nothing. 3. The soul, though itself abstract thought and knowledge, can only exercise thought, consciousness, sensation, and cognition, and indeed can only act and will when connected with external objects of sensation, invested with some bodily form, and joined to mind {vianas ). % For observe that mind is an internal organ of sense, a sort of inlet of thought into the soul, belonging only to the body, and quite as distinct from the soul as any external organ of the body. 4. The union of soul and body is productive of bondage, and, in the case of human souls, of misery. For note that the soul, so united, becomes conscious of personal existence and individuality, and is capable of receiving impres- sions pleasurable or painful. Then it commences acting ; but all action, good or bad, leads to bondage because it entails a con- sequence, according to the maxim Avasyam eva bhoktavyain kritam karma hibkdhbham, ‘ When an action, good or bad, has been committed, its fruit must of necessity be eaten.’ Hence,
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