and the Munis sought for shelter amongst the bristles upon the scriptural body of the boar, trembling as he rose up, supporting the earth, and dripping with moisture. Then the great sages, Sanandana and the rest, residing continually in the sphere of saints, were inspired with delight; and, bowing lowly, they praised the stern-eyed upholder of the earth.*

The Yogins. Triumph, lord of lords supreme; Keśava, sovereign of the earth, the wielder of the mace, the shell, the discus, and the sword: cause of production, destruction, and existence. THOU ART, O god: there is no other supreme condition but thou. Thou, lord, art the person of sacrifice: for thy feet are the Vedas; thy tusks are the stake to which the victim is bound; in thy teeth are the offerings; thy mouth is the altar; thy tongue is the fire; and the hairs of thy body are the sacrificial grass. Thine eyes, O omnipotent, are day and night; thy head is the seat of all, the place of Brahma; thy mane is all the hymns of the Vedas; thy nostrils are all oblations: O thou, whose snout is the ladle of oblation; whose deep voice is the chanting of the Sáma Veda; whose body is the hall of sacrifice; whose joints are the different ceremonies; and whose ears have the properties of both voluntary and obligatory rites:1 do thou, who art eternal, who art in size a

Śarabha, a fabulous animal, and Vishnu as the Varáha, in which the latter suffers himself and his offspring begotten upon earth to be slain.

1 This, which is nothing more than the development of the notion that the Varáha incarnation typifies the ritual of the Vedas,

mountain,* be propitious. We acknowledge thee, who hast traversed the world, O universal form, to be the beginning, the continuance, and the destruction of all things: thou art the supreme god. Have pity on us, O lord of conscious and unconscious beings. The orb of the earth is seen seated on the tip of thy tusks, as if thou hadst been sporting amidst a lake where the lotos floats, and hadst borne away the leaves covered with soil. The space between heaven and earth is occupied by thy body, O thou of unequalled glory, resplendent with the power of pervading the universe, O lord, for the benefit of all. Thou art the aim of all: there is none other than thee, sovereign of the world: this is thy might, by which all things, fixed or movable, are pervaded. This form, which is now beheld, is thy form, as one essentially with wisdom. Those who have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of the nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this universe is of the nature of wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know true wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with divine knowledge, as one with thee, O god. Be favourable, O universal spirit: raise up this earth, for the habitation of created beings. Inscrutable deity, whose eyes are like lotoses, give us felicity. O lord, thou art endowed with the quality of goodness:

is repeated in most of the Puránas, in the same or nearly the same words.

*

The MSS. within my reach omit the words answering to "who art in size a mountain".

raise up, Govinda, this earth, for the general good. Grant us happiness, O lotos-eyed. May this, thy activity in creation, be beneficial to the earth. Salutation to thee. Grant us happiness, O lotos-eyed.

PARÁSARA.—The supreme being thus eulogized, upholding the earth, raised it quickly, and placed it on the summit of the ocean, where it floats like a mighty vessel, and, from its expansive surface, does not sink beneath the waters.* Then, having levelled the earth, the great eternal deity divided it into portions, by mountains. He who never wills in vain created, by his irresistible power, those mountains again upon the earth, which had been consumed at the destruction of the world. Having then divided the earth into seven great portions or continents, as it was before, he constructed, in like manner, the four (lower) spheres, earth, sky, heaven, and the sphere of the sages (Maharloka). Thus Hari, the four-faced god, invested with the quality of activity, and taking the form of Brahmá, accomplished the creation. But he (Brahmá) is only the instrumental cause of things to be created; the things that are capable of being created arise from nature as a common material cause. With exception of one instrumental cause alone, there is no need of any other cause; for (imperceptible) substance becomes perceptible substance according to the powers with which it is originally imbued.1†

1 This seems equivalent to the ancient notion of a plastic

A large portion of the present chapter, down to this point, has been translated anew in Original Sanskrit Texts, Part IV., pp. 32 and 33. + निमित्तमात्रमेवासौ सृज्यानां सर्गकर्मणि ।

प्रधानकारणीभूता यतो वै सृज्यशक्तयः ॥

nature; "all parts of matter being supposed able to form themselves artificially and methodically *** to the greatest advantage of their present respective capabilities." This, which Cudworth (c. III.) calls hylozoism, is not incompatible with an active creator: “not ** that he should avtovgyet̃v äravτa, set his own hand ** to every work," which, as Aristotle says, would be, απρεπές ** T Oε, unbecoming God; but, as in the case of Brahma and other subordinate agents, that they should occasion the various developments of crude nature to take place, by supplying that will, of which nature itself is incapable. Action being once instituted by an instrumental medium, or by the will of an intellectual agent, it is continued by powers, or a vitality inherent in nature or the matter of creation itself. The efficiency of such subordinate causes was advocated by Plato, Aristotle, and others; and the opinion of Zeno, as stated by Laërtius, might be taken for a translation of some such passage as that in our text: «Ἔστι δὲ φύσις ἕξις ἐξ αὐτῆς κινουμένη κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους, ἀποτελοῦσά τε καὶ συνέχουσα τὰ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐν ὡρισμένοις χρόνοις, καὶ τοιαῦτα ὁρῶσα ἀφ' οίων ἀπεκρίθη. Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to ** seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was secreted." Intell. System, I., 328. So the commentator illustrates our text, by observing that the cause of the budding of rice is in its own seed, and its development is from itself, though its growth takes place only

निमित्तमात्रं मुत्कैकं नान्यत्किंचिदपेक्ष्यते ।

नीयते तपतां श्रेष्ठ स्वशक्त्या वस्तु वस्तुताम् ॥

These rather obscure verses lend themselves, without violence, to some such interpretation as the following: "He is only the ideal cause of the potencies to be created in the work of creation; and from him proceed the potencies to be created, after they have become the real cause. Save that one ideal cause, there is no other to which the world can be referred. Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency-i. e., through the potency of that cause-every created thing comes by its proper nature."

In the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as contrasted with upádána, the material cause. In the Sankhya, pradhana implies

at a determinate season, in consequence agency of the rain.

of the instrumental

the functions of both. The author, it appears, means to express, in the passage before us, that Brahma is a cause superior to pradhána. This cause he calls nimitta. It was necessary, therefore, in the translation, to choose terms neither Vedanta nor Sankhya. "Ideal cause" and "real cause" may, perhaps, answer the purpose.