वेदान्त पारिजात सौरभ (भगवद् निम्बार्काचार्य - द्वैताद्वैत वेदान्त ब्रह्मसूत्र भाष्य सटीक)

[SŪ. 2. 3. 14.
ADH. 5 ] VEDĀNTA-KAUSTUBHA 403
created ahaṃkāra. Then the Lord, the Master, who is the support of
all elements, (created) what is celebrated to be the ether From the
ether originated water, from water fire and air, then from the conjunc-
tion of fire and air the earth originated’, and so on. And this "fits
in" on the ground of the scriptural text: ‘The earth merges in water,
water merges in the fire, the fire merges in the air, the air merges in
the ether, the ether into the sense-organs, the sense-organs in the
subtle essences, the subtle essences in bhūtādi, bhūtādi in mahat,
mahat in the unmanifest’ (Subāla 2.4), on the ground of the following
Smṛti passage, viz. ‘The earth, the support of the world, merges,
divine sage, in water, water merges in the fire, the fire merges in
the air’; and on the ground of observing salt, ice and the like to be
dissolved into water. What is not mentioned, by the text about
creation, in the order of the origination of prakṛti, mahat, ahaṃkāra,
the ether and so on, is to be supplied from the text about dissolution;
i e. the construction is: ‘The ether (merges in) the sense-organs, the
sense-organs in the subtle essences, the subtle essences in bhūtādi’.
The ether merges in the subtle essences, the subtle essences merge in
bhūtādi, i.e. in tāmasa ahaṃkāra, the sense-organs in sense-organs, i e
in the rājasa ahaṃkāra,—since here by the word ‘sense-organ’
ahaṃkāra is understood there being non-difference between cause and
effect. The plural number, viz. ‘subtle essences’ is meant for showing
that the dissolution of the earth and the rest takes place through the
subtle essences of smell and the rest. On account of the three-foldness
of ahaṃkāra, the plural number, viz. ‘In the sense-organs’, has been
used. Thus, it is established that dissolution, taking place in the
above inverted order, is not contradicted by anything whatsoever.
Here ends the section entitled “The reverse” (5).
COMPARISON
Rāmānuja and Baladeva
This is sūtra 15 in Rāmānuja’s commentary. He does not begin
a new adhikaraṇa here, concerned with the order of dissolution, but
continues the topic of the order of evolution. Thus the sūtra means
according to him: And the order (of the origination of the vital-
breath and the rest), on the contrary, (stated) in a reverse order (to