A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t1.2.3

c6.s3.t1.2.3

The interpretation which Śaṅkarācārya has put upon it, and with which Deussen, Max Müller and Rajendralal Mitra have all agreed, seems after all to be an unnatural interpretation. Thus Śaṅkara³ explains the word as meaning one who knows himself—the Kantian “I am I”—an interpretation which does not come out of the expression “abhivimāna.” Deussen⁴ translates the whole passage in a way which only supports the meaning of Śaṅkara so far as the word “abhivimāna” is concerned : “Wer aber diesen Ātman Vaiśvānara so [zeigend] als eine Spanne gross auf sich selbst (abhi) bezogen (vimāna) verehrt, der isst die Nahrung in allen Welten, in allen Wesen, in allen Selbsten.” Max Müller⁵ translates “abhivimāna” as, “identical with himself,” while Rajendralal Mitra⁶ says it means “the principal object indicated by the pronoun I.” All these interpretations err in understanding too much by the preposition *abhi*. By no manipulation, however clever, could the meaning of "self" be extracted out of it as Deussen and others have tried to do. Would it not be much more natural to understand " *abhivimāna* " as meaning simply "measuring"?