अधिभूतं क्षरो भावः पुरुषश्चाधिदैवतम् ।अधियज्ञोऽहमेवात्र देहे देहभृतां वर ॥
adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ puruṣaścādhidaivatamadhiyajño’hamevātra dehe dehabhṛtāṁ vara
Adhibhuta is ksharabhava, adhidaiva is the Purusha; I myself am the Lord of sacrifice, adhiyajna, here in the body, O best of embodied beings.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
Here we have certain expressions which give us in their brief sum the chief essential truths of the manifestation of the supreme Divine in the cosmos. All the originative and effective aspects of it are there, all that concerns the soul in its return to integral self-knowledge. First there is that Brahman, tad brahma; adhyātma, second, the principle of the self in Nature; adhibhūta and adhidaiva next, the objective phenomenon and subjective phenomenon of being; adhiyajña last, the secret of the cosmic principle of works and sacrifice. I, the Purushottama (māṁ viduḥ), says in effect Krishna, I who am above all these things, must yet be sought and known through all together and by means of their relations,—that is the only complete way for the human consciousness which is seeking its path back towards Me. But these terms in themselves are not at first quite clear or at least they are open to different interpretations, they have to be made precise in their connotation, and Arjuna the disciple at once asks8·1–2 for their elucidation. Krishna answers very briefly,—nowhere does the Gita linger very long upon any purely metaphysical explanation; it gives only so much and in such a way as will make their truth just seizable for the soul to proceed on to experience. By that Brahman, a phrase which in the Upanishads is more than once used for the self-existent as opposed to the phenomenal being, the Gita intends, it appears, the immutable self-existence which is the highest self-expression of the Divine and on whose unalterable eternity all the rest, all that moves and evolves, is founded, akṣaraṁ paramam. By adhyātma it means svabhāva, the spiritual way and law of being of the soul in the supreme Nature. Karma, it says, is the name given to the creative impulse and energy, visargaḥ, which looses out things from this first essential self-becoming, this Swabhava, and effects, creates, works out under its influence the cosmic becoming of existences in Prakriti. By adhibhūta is to be understood all the result of mutable becoming, kṣaro bhāvaḥ. By adhidaiva is intended the Purusha, the soul in Nature, the subjective being who observes and enjoys as the object of his consciousness all that is this mutable becoming of his essential existence worked out here by Karma in Nature. By adhiyajña, the Lord of works and sacrifice, I mean, says Krishna, myself, the Divine, the Godhead, the Purushottama here secret in the body of all these embodied existences. All that is, therefore, falls within this formula.
All this bringing out and continual change from state to state is Karma, is action of Nature, is the energy of Prakriti, the worker, the goddess of processes. It is first a loosing forth of the svabhāva into its creative action, visargaḥ. The creation is of existences in the becoming, bhūta-karaḥ, and of all that they8·3 subjectively or otherwise become, bhāva-karaḥ. All taken together, it is a constant birth of things in Time, udbhava, of which the creative energy of Karma is the principle. All this mutable becoming emerges by a combination of the powers and energies of Nature, adhibhūta, which constitutes the world and is the object of the8·4 soul’s consciousness. In it all the soul is the enjoying and observing Deity in Nature; the divine powers of mind and will and sense, all the powers of its conscious being by which it reflects this working of Prakriti are its godheads, adhidaiva. This soul in Nature is therefore the kṣara puruṣa, it is the mutable soul, the eternal activity of the Godhead: the same soul in the Brahman drawn back from her is the akṣara puruṣa, the immutable self, the eternal silence of the Godhead. But in the form and body of the mutable being inhabits the supreme Godhead. Possessing at once the calm of the immutable existence and the enjoyment of the mutable action there dwells in man the Purushottama. He is not only remote from us in some supreme status beyond, but he is here too in the body of every being, in the heart of man and in Nature. There he receives the works of Nature as a sacrifice and awaits the conscious self-giving of the human soul: but always even in the human creature’s ignorance and egoism he is the Lord of his swabhava and the Master of all his works, who presides over the law of Prakriti and Karma. From him the soul came forth into the play of Nature’s mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to the highest status of the Divine, paraṁ dhāma.
Other writings
यज्ञस्य । यज्ञ is acknowledged to be a name for Vishnu, for the Supreme Lord, and the Supreme is not a sacrifice. We must find some other meaning for यज्ञ in the etymology of the word. We find the kindred यमः which means he who controls, governs, as in नियन्ता and other members of the य family of roots. The sense of force put forth to reach, obtain or control is a common significance in this group. “Restraint” is a sense of the word यः, “obtaining” of या; “effort, control, mastery” is found in यत्, यतः, यतिः, यत्न, यन्ता, यन्त्र्, यम्, यमः (नियमः, संयमः), यामः; ययी is a name of Shiva; यज्ञः itself is a name of Agni, the master of तपः or force in action and exertion; यशः is fame, glory, beauty, wealth,—in Bengali, success, attainment, probably a survival of its original sense; in यविष्ठ youngest, from a lost यवः, not lost to the Veda, युवन् youth etc, & in यव barley, यवसः grass, the root sense is “strong, flourishing, vigorous”; यस्, यासः (आयासः, प्रयासः) bring us back to the idea of effort and labour. These significations arise [as] developments from the sense of “going”, (combined with effort or an original impetus), with its common, almost invariable development of going after, seeking, striving, desiring, (या, याच्), also reaching, meeting, mixing, acquiring, joining, embracing, enjoying (यु, युज्, योगः, यामी, योषा, युध्, योनि) and the sense of reaching to, joining to or handing, from which we have the idea of giving, यच्छ्, यज् in the sense of sacrifice, cf याजयति. The sense of strong one, master, controller, lord is established for यज्ञः by the application to Vishnu and Agni, continued at a time when the etymological justification had been lost; the sense of sacrifice is established by the universal later use. But it is also capable of the same senses as योगः, यत्न or the lost यत् from which we have यतिः, यतः etc; it could mean effort, action, tapasya, Yoga; this sense is the basis of the idea attached to the word यज्ञः in the Gita and of the meaning of adhiyajna there as the One in whom all action, tapasya and Yoga rest and to whom they are consciously or unconsciously devoted. The modern form of the Gita is there trying to assimilate an older form in which यज्ञ had its natural meaning,—Yoga, action, tapasya.
