Verse 12.12 [The Responsible Agent: the Self]

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

योऽस्यात्मनः कारयिता तं क्षेत्रज्ञं प्रचक्षते ।
यः करोति तु कर्माणि स भूतात्मोच्यते बुधैः ॥ १२ ॥

yo'syātmanaḥ kārayitā taṃ kṣetrajñaṃ pracakṣate |
yaḥ karoti tu karmāṇi sa bhūtātmocyate budhaiḥ || 12 ||

He who is the impeller of this body, him they call the ‘Kṣetrajña,’ ‘the Conscious Being’; while he who does the acts is called by the learned, the ‘Bhūtātman,’ ‘the Material Entity.’—(12)

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

‘Of this body, he who is the impeller,’—to all such actions as moving and the like, and who is the ‘doer’ of these acts, through his efforts,—‘is the Conscious Being.’

‘Asya,’ ‘this’ and ‘ātmanaḥ,’ ‘body,’ are in apposition to one another.

The term ‘ātman’ here denotes the body,—this denotation being based on the fact that the body subserves the purposes of the Ātman, Self.

‘He who does the act’—of drinking and the like,—and who is the product of these acts,—in the shape of the Body—becomes the ‘doer’ of acts,—is called the ‘material entity’—an aggregate of earth and other material substances, and belonging to an inferior category. This has been thus declared in an old text—‘There are two selves—the Inner Soul and the Body.’—(12)

 

Explanatory notes by Ganganath Jha

‘Kṣetrajña’.—Nandana is misrepresented by Buhler; he also takes the word in the sense of the jīvātmā.

‘Bhūtātmā’.—The body (Medhātithi, Govindarāja, Kūlluka and Rāghavānanda);—‘The soul in the form of the material substances and other non-sentient things’ (Nārāyaṇa);—‘the sense-organs, and the rest’ (Nandana, who is again misrepresented by Buhler).

 

Comparative notes by various authors

Maitryupaniṣad (3.3).