Manusmriti with the Commentary of Medhatithi
by Ganganatha Jha | 1920 | 1,381,940 words | ISBN-10: 8120811550 | ISBN-13: 9788120811553
This is the English translation of the Manusmriti, which is a collection of Sanskrit verses dealing with ‘Dharma’, a collective name for human purpose, their duties and the law. Various topics will be dealt with, but this volume of the series includes 12 discourses (adhyaya). The commentary on this text by Medhatithi elaborately explains various t...
Verse 12.18
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:
सोऽनुभूयासुखोदर्कान् दोषान् विषयसङ्गजान् ।
व्यपेतकल्मषोऽभ्येति तावेवोभौ महौजसौ ॥ १८ ॥so'nubhūyāsukhodarkān doṣān viṣayasaṅgajān |
vyapetakalmaṣo'bhyeti tāvevobhau mahaujasau || 18 ||Having suffered the evils produced by attachment to sensual objects, and conducive to misery, he, having his sins destroyed, approaches those same two glorious ones.—(18)
Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):
‘Attachment to sensual objects’—being addicted to such things as are forbidden. From this arise ‘evils’—the results of sins;—having experienced the hellish torments, which constitute these ‘evils’—the men have their ‘sins destroyed’—guilt removed,—by that experience,—‘approaches those two Glorious Ones.’
“Which two? In fact the ‘Great Principle’ and the ‘Conscious Being,’ which form the subject-matter of the present context; but from the next verse it appears that it is the Conscious Being who experiences pleasures and pains; so that the term ‘he’ of the text must stand for that being. And thus the meaning comes to be that ‘this Conscious Being approaches the same Being,’ which is absurd: the ‘approached’ and the ‘approacher’ being the same.”
True; but the difference intended is an assumed one. In fact, what is meant by ‘approaching’ is that ‘the said Being is all that remains of the man’; the sense being that as the ‘Conscious Being,’ he was invested with the aggregate of the ‘life-breath and other accessories, called the ‘Great Principle,’ but after having experienced the results of his misdeeds, he becomes divested of it, and remains in the form of the pure ‘Conscious Being,’—who has his abode in the Subtle Body only.
Others explain the ‘two Glorious Ones’ as standing for the Great Principle and the Supreme Self.
‘Conducive to misery.’—It is only after the sins have been destroyed that one experiences pleasure; so long as adverse sins are there, even in the slightest degree, there can be no pleasure; just as when there is slightest indigestion, there is no pleasure in eating anything.—(18)