Verse 2.3 [Pūrvapakṣa continued]

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

सङ्कल्पमूलः कामो वै यज्ञाः सङ्कल्पसम्भवाः ।
व्रतानि यमधर्माश्च सर्वे सङ्कल्पजाः स्मृताः ॥ ३ ॥

saṅkalpamūlaḥ kāmo vai yajñāḥ saṅkalpasambhavāḥ |
vratāni yamadharmāśca sarve saṅkalpajāḥ smṛtāḥ || 3 ||

Desire has its root in Thought; Sacrifices proceed from Thought; Vows and Restraints—all these have been described as originating in Thought.—(3)

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

Thought is the root of sacrifice and other acts, as also of desire; when a man is going to perform a sacrifice, or any act, he must think of it: and when the thinking has been done, there must follow, from the said Thinking, Desire,—however undesirable this latter may be; for instance, when a man, going to cook, lights fire, there arises, from the fire, the undesirable smoke also. Thus it is impossible that sacrifices should be performed and there should be no desire at all.

Question.—“What is this Thought, which is the root of all action?”

Answer.—We explain it as follows:—Thought is that function of the mind which precedes Desire and Resolution; all these three are functions of the mind, and they are at the root of all activity. As a matter of fact, no physical activity is possible without Thought. What happens in the case of all activity is that—(a) first of all we have the Thought or Idea of the exact nature of a thing, and what is meant by ‘Thought,’ in the present context is the cognition that one h as of a certain thing as capable of accomplishing a definite desirable purpose;—(b) after this follows a longing, a wish; and this is ‘desire’;—(c) after the desire has arisen in the form ‘how may I obtain it,’ the man resolves, determines, that he shall act (towards the obtaining of the thing); and this is ‘Resolution.’ It is only after these three mental operations have been gone through that the man proceeds to that external activity which would accomplish the desired end. For instance, when a man is hungry, (a) he thinks of—has the idea of—the action of eating,—(b) then he desires ‘may I eat,’—(c) then comes the resolution ‘I shall desist from all other activity and take to eating,’—(d) then he says to the persons in charge of the place where the act of eating is to be done—‘make ready,’ ‘set the kitchen going.’ [ Objection ]—“If this is so, then Sacrifices and other acts do not proceed from mere Thought, but from Thought, Longing and Resolution; then why is it said that Sacrifices proceed from Thought?”

[ Answer ]—There is no force in this objection, since Thought is the prime cause. It is in view of this that the author is going to assert (in the next verse) that ‘there is no action done by one who is entirely without desires.’

Votes—A ‘vow’ consists in a mental resolve, in the form ‘this shall be done by me as long as I live’; to this class belong the vows of the Snātaka.

Restraints—are negative in their character,—such as desisting from, killing and so forth.

[The meaning of all this is that] without thought there is neither activity towards what ought to be done, nor desisting from what is prohibited and ought not to be done.”—(3)

 

Explanatory notes by Ganganath Jha

‘Saṅkalpamūlaḥ kārnaḥ’—Nandana explains this as—‘The desire for rewards is the root of the will to act.’

‘Vratāni’—The term stands for all those duties that one makes up his mind to perform all through life,—according to Medhātithi, Govindarāja and Nārāyaṇa;—‘the vow of the Religious Student’—according to Nandana.

‘Yamadharmāḥ’—‘The prohibitive rules’ (Medhātithi, Govindarāja and Nārāyaṇa);—‘the rules pertaining to the Recluse and the Renunciate’ (Nandana).

 

Comparative notes by various authors

Yājñavalkya, 1.7 .—‘ The desire that has its source in proper reflection is the source of Dharma.’

Āpastaṃba, Dharmasūtra, 1.5.—‘They teach that whatever one determines and thinks of with the mind, or speaks of with speech, or sees with the eyes,—he becomes that same.’

Bhagavadgītā—‘Desires have their source in the will,’