The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c9.s3.t2.3

c9.s3.t2.3

are only functions (*vritti*), as indeed we can understand under the *Indriyas*, which depart hence with the soul, naturally not the material organs, but only functions conceived as independently existent potencies. In this sense it is a matter of course that only the function (*vritti*) of the *Indriyas* enters (*sampadyate*) into Manas, while the bodily organ perishes with the body. The question here raised on the other hand, as is apparent from the way it is answered, must be understood in the sense that by *vritti* are not to be understood these functions themselves, but only their activity, and by their *sampatti* not their entering into Manas, but their complete dissolution (*pravilaya* p. 1088, 1, *upaçama* p. 1088, 4). Accordingly we must interpret the question under discussion to be: whether at death the sense organ (the *vritti*, according to p. 715, 10) attached to the soul, when it enters (*sampadyate*) into Manas, is, on this entering in, dissolved (*sampadyate*) only in its functional activity (*vritti*) or in its very essence? The answer is that only the functional activity, not the *Indriyam* perishes (*vâg-vrittir manasi sampadyate* p. 1088, 1), in the first place, because otherwise complete non-separateness (*avibhâga*) would ensue, and the condition of non-separateness, according to 4, 2, 16, belongs only to the liberated and not to others (p. 1088, 5); again, because the perception which shows how the activity of the senses dies out at death, while that of Manas (consciousness) persists for some time longer, only gives us the right to speak of an extinction of the functional activity, not of that of the agent (p. 1088, 10); finally, because a thing, according to its essence, can only enter into that from which it arose, as a pot into clay, but according to its functional activity, it can enter into something else, as for instance the functional activity of fire springs from fuel and is extinguished in water, although both are different from it (p. 1088, 14). If, notwithstanding, the passage says that speech enters into Manas, this depends on usage (*upacâra*), which does not distinguish between the action and the agent (p. 1089, 3).—The ambiguity displayed by the author in the use of these expressions *vritti* and *sampadyate* is to us unintelligible.