Note 85 — SA@NKARA'S INTRODUCTION

Footnote 85:

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The above discussion of the prohibitory passages of the Veda is of a very scholastic nature, and various clauses in it are differently interpreted by the different commentators. Sa@nkara endeavours to fortify his doctrine, that not all parts of the Veda refer to action by an appeal to prohibitory passages which do not enjoin action but abstinence from action. The legitimacy of this appeal might be contested on the ground that a prohibitory passage also, (as, for instance, 'a brâhmana is not to be killed,') can be explained as enjoining a positive action, viz. some action opposed in nature to the one forbidden, so that the quoted passage might be interpreted to mean 'a determination, &c. of not killing a brâhmana is to be formed;' just as we understand something positive by the expression 'a non-brâhmana,' viz. some man who is a kshattriya or something else. To this the answer is that, wherever we can, we must attribute to the word 'not' its primary sense which is the absolute negation of the word to which it is joined; so that passages where it is joined to words denoting action must be considered to have for their purport the entire absence of action. Special cases only are excepted, as the one alluded to in the text where certain prohibited actions are enumerated under the heading of vows; for as a vow is considered as something positive, the non-doing of some particular action must there be understood as intimating the performance of some action of an opposite nature. The question as to the various meanings of the particle 'not' is discussed in all treatises on the Pûrvâ Mîmâmsâ; see, for instance, Arthasamgraha, translation, p. 39 ff.