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...

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

देहादुत्क्रमणं चास्मात् पुनर्गर्भे च सम्भवम् ।
योनिकोटिसहस्रेषु सृतीश्चास्यान्तरात्मनः ॥ ६३ ॥

dehādutkramaṇaṃ cāsmāt punargarbhe ca sambhavam |
yonikoṭisahasreṣu sṛtīścāsyāntarātmanaḥ || 63 ||

There is for his Inner Soul departure from the body, then again birth in the womb, and transmigrations among millions of life-forms.—(63)

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

There is ‘departure’—going out—of the life-breaths; and this constitutes unbearable pain.

Birth in the womb’— where there are several kinds of pain: the organs are not yet developed, the child in the womb is in utter darkness, and it also suffers from diseases, described in the medical science, as proceeding from the extremely cold and hot foods eaten by the mother in varying quantities.

Transmigrations’— passing through—‘among millions of life-forms’;—the soul being born in the bodies of lower animals, worms, insects, dogs and so forth.

Objection—“The Inner Soul is held to be omnipresent and eternal; how can there be any ‘departure’ for it, when it is present everywhere? how again can there be any ‘transmigration’ among life-forms? how too can there be any ‘birth’ for it when it is eternal?”

Our answer is as follows:—The theory of some people is that there lies within the body the ‘personality’ of the size of the thumb, composed of rudimentary substances, mind and intellect; and it is this personality that goes on being born during the entire series of births and deaths; and when this becomes endowed with a certain merit, the faculty of consciousness becomes manifested in it; and it is through this faculty that the qualities of the said Personality come to be attributed to the Inner Soul.

Or, the explanation may be that the inner soul is related to certain entities in the shape of the life-breath and so forth; and when these depart, the soul is said to ‘depart.’ Similarly with ‘birth.’

All this we shall explain again under Discourse XII and we need not prolong the discussion here.—(63)

 

Explanatory notes by Ganganath Jha

This verse is quoted in Aparārka (p. 968);—and in Yatidharmasaṅgraha (p. 35).

 

Comparative notes by various authors

Viṣṇu (96.39).—‘On the agonies to be suffered in the passage of the soul through the bodies of animals and plants.’

Yājñavalkya (3.63, 64).—(See under 61.)

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