Mb. Colebrooke on the Philosophy of the Hindus. 35 



efficient and material cause of the world : creator and nature, framer and 

 frame, doer and deed. At the consummation of all things, all are resolved 

 into him: as the spider spins his thread from his own substance and 

 gathers it in again; as vegetables sprout from the soil and return to it, 

 earth to earth ; as hair and nails grow from a living body and continue 

 with it. The supreme being is one, sole-existent, secondless, entire, without 

 parts, sempiternal, infinite, ineffable, invariable ruler of all, universal soul, 

 truth, wisdom, intelligence, happiness. 



Individual souls, emanating from the supreme one, are likened to 

 innumerable sparks issuing from a blazing fire. From him they proceed, 

 and to him they return, being of the same essence. The soul, which governs 

 the body, together with its organs, neither is born ; nor does it die. It is a 

 portion of the divine substance ; and, as such, infinite, immortal, intelligent, 

 sentient, true. 



It is governed by the supreme. Its activity is not of its essence, but 

 inductive through its organs : as an artisan, taking his tools, labours ancl 

 undergoes toil and pain, but laying them aside reposes ; so is the soul active, 

 and a sufferer by means of its organs ; but, divested of them, and returning 

 to the supreme one, is at rest and is happy. It is not a free and independent 

 agent, but made to act by the supreme one, who causes it to do in one state 

 as it had purposed in a former condition. According to its predisposition 

 for good or evil, for enjoined or forbidden deeds, it is made to do good or ill, 

 and thus it has retribution for previous works. Yet God is not author of 

 evil ; for so it has been from eternity : the series of preceding forms and of 

 dispositions manifested in them has been infinite. 



The soul is incased in body as in a sheath, or rather in a succession of 

 sheaths. The first or inner case is the intellectual one (vijjii/dnamaj/a) : it 

 is composed of the sheer (^tan-mdtra), or simple elements uncombined, and 

 consists of the intellect (6z<fM«) joined with the five senses. 



The next is the mental {rnanbmayd) sheath, in which mind is joined with 

 the preceding. A third sheath or case comprises the organs of action and 

 the vital faculties, and is termed the organic or vital case. These three 

 sheaths {Ma) cojistitute the subtile frame (sucshma-s' arira or linga-^ ar'ira) 

 which attends the soul in its transmigrations. The interior rudiment con- 

 fined to the inner case is the causal frame (cdran'a-^ arira). 



The gross body {sHiula-s arira) which it animates from birth to death in 

 any step of its transmigrations, is composed of the coarse elements, formed 



F 2 



