Prashna Upanishad with Shankara’s Commentary
by S. Sitarama Sastri | 1928 | 19,194 words
The Prashna Upanishad is a series philosophical poems presented as questions (prashna) inquired by various Hindu sages (Rishi) and answered by Sage Pippalada. The questions discuss knowledge about Brahman, the relation of the individual (Purusha) with the universal (Atman), meditation, immortality and various other Spiritual topics. This commentar...
Verse 4.9
एष हि द्रष्ट स्प्रष्टा श्रोता घ्राता रसयिता मन्ता बोद्धा कर्ता विज्ञानात्मा पुरुषः । स परेऽक्शर आत्मनि संप्रतिष्ठते ॥ ९ ॥
eṣa hi draṣṭa spraṣṭā śrotā ghrātā rasayitā mantā boddhā kartā vijñānātmā puruṣaḥ । sa pare'kśara ātmani saṃpratiṣṭhate || 9 ||
9. This is the seer, toucher, hearer, smeller, taster, the thinker, the knower, the doer, the intelligent entity, Purusha. He becomes merged in the Supreme, undecaying Âtman.
Shankara’s Commentary:
Com.—Then, the self which has entered here, like the sun in the water, etc., with the attributes of enjoyer and doer; this is the seer, toucher, hearer, smeller, taster, thinker, knower, doer, the intelligent self (Vignana means the intellect being the instrument by which things are known). Here, it means, he who knows, i.e., the knower. Vignanatma, of the nature of knower. The meaning is that he is a knower by his nature. Purusha, because full of, i.e., subject to the conditions above described, i.e., the nature of effects and instruments. And he enters into the supreme undecaying Âtman, the supporter of the universe, as the reflected image of the sun, etc., in water enters into the sun, etc.