Verse 11.238

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

यद् दुस्तरं यद् दुरापं यद् दुर्गं यच्च दुष्करम् ।
सर्वं तु तपसा साध्यं तपो हि दुरतिक्रमम् ॥ २३८ ॥

yad dustaraṃ yad durāpaṃ yad durgaṃ yacca duṣkaram |
sarvaṃ tu tapasā sādhyaṃ tapo hi duratikramam || 238 ||

What is hard to traverse, what is hard to attain, what is hard to reach, and what is hard to do,—all this is accomplished by Austerity; as Austerity is irrepressible.—(238)

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

‘Hard to traverse’— that which can be traversed with difficulty; e.g., some great trouble due to illness, or to attack by a powerful enemy. All this is easily met by ascetics.

‘Hard to attain’— that which is got with difficulty; e.g., the power to fly in the sky and so forth.

‘Hard to reach’—e.g., riding on the back of clouds and so forth.

‘Hard to do’—e.g., the granting of boons and pronouncing of curses; the reversing of these; as for instance Saṃvarta created another set of divine beings.

All this is accomplished by Austerity.

These three verses describe the fact that the Kṛcchra penances are conducive to all kinds of prosperity and advancement

“Inasmuch as the injunction of expiations forms the subject-matter of the present context, any praises bestowed upon Kṛcchra must be taken as supplementary to that injunction; and it would not be right to take them as actually enjoining the penance itself as leading to prosperity. Nor is it impossible to take the present verse as a purely commendatory declamation,—the sense being—‘the Kṛcchra penances are so very effective that what is hard to traverse, such as the ocean and the like, become traversed by their means, wherefore then could they not wipe off sins?”

Our answer to this is as follows:—In the Gṛhyasūtras and the Sāmavidhāna, we find the Kṛcchra enjoined without reference to expiation; so that: since such injunctions of the penance are not in the wake of any other enjoined act, the penance can certainly be taken as leading to prosperity and advancement. It has also been declared that—‘Having performed these Kṛcchra penances, one becomes accomplished in all Vedas, and becomes recognised by all the gods.’ (Gautama, 20. 24). What is meant by ‘becoming accomplished in the Vedas’ is that the performer obtains that reward which is obtainable by the proper study, according to prescribed rules, of the Veda. This injunction that we have of the study of Veda, without reference to rewards, becomes fulfilled by the study of even a single Veda; so that when several Vedas are studied, this can only be regarded as bringing about special merit. The expression ‘becomes recognised by all the gods’ means that he obtains the results obtainable from the performance of all the sacrifices; if is only when a man performs sacrifices that he becomes ‘recognised by the gods,’ and not by performing expiations, which partake of the nature of gifts (not sacrifices). Further, what has been said in the present work in connection with the statement that ‘for the Brāhmaṇa, Austerity is knowledge’ (236),—which was suspected of implying the omission by the Brāhmaṇa of all his duties,—is possible only if the penance in question be regarded as conducive to prosperity and advancement. As for expiations, they are meant to remove sins; they are not of the nature of acts performed for the attainment of desirable results; so that the scope of the two sets of acts being different, how could anything said in regard to expiations be suspected of leading to the omission of duties? If, on the other hand, the Kṛcchra penances were conducive to prosperity and advancement, they would stand on the same footing as other acts tending to the same end; and it would be natural to suspect the omission of these latter. Thus we conclude that while the next verse speaks of these penances as destructive of sins, the present one speaks of them as conducive to prosperity and advancement; and these two sentences stand apart from each other; and it is only light that what is asserted by means of the ‘sentences’ should set aside what is only indicated by the context, it is in this sense that we have the following declaration of Dvaipāyana and other sages—‘By the force of Austerities, powerful intellect and other excellences are acquired.’

From all this it follows that Austerities are conducive to all kinds of desirable results. In the case of the Vedic rituals, though it has been declared that ‘the Darśapūrṇamāsa sacrifices are conducive to all results, the Jyotiṣṭoma is conducive to all results,’ yet, from the very nature of persons undertaking the performance of these rites, the term ‘all’ in this declaration is taken as standing only for all those results that have been declared as following from these sacrifices, and not actually all results in the literal sense of the term. But in the case in question it is not so; what is said in the present verse has to be taken as literally true.—(238)

 

Comparative notes by various authors

(verses 11.234-244)

See Comparative notes for Verse 11.234.