History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c93.308

v7.c93.308

The fifth (and last) part of Vedic texts consists of ‘pratiṣedha’ (niṣedha, prohibition). Prohibitions²⁰²⁴ serve the ends of man by causing men to desist from actions which would produce undesirable results. To explain, just as vidhis, which express an urge or prompting (to do something), suggest, in order to effectuate their prompting quality, that the matter to be enjoined such as a sacrifice is the means to attain a desirable result and so urge a man to do it, so also prohibitions such as ‘one should not eat Kalañja (red garlic)’ or ‘one should not utter what is false’ (Tai. S II. 5. 5. 6) denote a turning away and in order to effectuate their own deterring quality, suggest that the thing to be prohibited viz. eating kalañja or speaking untruth will be the cause of bringing about an undesirable result and so make a man desist from it. The particle ‘na’ may come before a verbal form, a noun or an adjective and ‘na’ becomes in certain cases ‘a’ (as in ‘abrāhmaṇa,’ ‘adharma’) and ‘an’ in certain others when it is prefixed to a word beginning with a vowel (as in ‘anaśva’, ‘anusna’). Pāṇini devotes several sūtras to ‘na’ and expressly refers to ‘pratiṣedha’ as one of the meanings conveyed by ‘na’ (vide Pāṇ. II. 2. 6, VI. 2. 155 &c.)²⁰²⁵; ‘na’ is said to convey six senses as noted in the verse quoted below.²⁰²⁶