भवान्मे प्रियकामार्थं वचनं यदिहोक्तवान्।
अकार्यं कार्यसङ्काशमपथ्यं पथ्यसंमितम्॥
bhavān me priya-kāmārthaṁ vacanaṁ yad ihoktavān
akāryaṁ kārya-saṅkāśam apathyaṁ pathya-sammitam
bhavān = You have; me = to Me; priya-kāma-artham = to fulfill the desires of My beloved [brother]; vacanam = the words; yat = that; iha uktavān = now spoken; akāryam = should not be taken seriously; kārya-saṅkāśam = [though] they appear to warrant such seriousness; apathyam = [for] they are unhealthy; pathya-sammitam = while appearing healthy.
The words that you have now spoken to Me to fulfill the desires of My beloved [brother] should not be taken seriously [though] they appear to warrant such seriousness [for] they are unhealthy while appearing healthy.
1 The Vedas eternally co-exist with the Supreme Being according to the Vedas themselves. For evidence and explanation concerning this, kindly scrutinize Chapter 1 of Śrīla Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s Siddhānta-darpaṇa. Therefore, one cannot assert in the literal sense that the four Vedas were authored by the Supreme Lord—for a book only begins to exist from the time it is authored by its author and here we are dealing with a set of books that are eternally co-existent with their author! So, the usage of the word author here has to be understood in the sense in which it is used in our world—a person who writes a book prior to which the book does not exist. And in this particular sense the four Vedas are certainly unauthored, just as the jīvātmās are eternally co-existent with the Supreme Lord and there was no point in time at which the Lord created us prior to which we didn’t exist.
2 This English paraphrase is slightly adapted from Dr BNK Sharma’s The Bhagavadgītā Bhāṣya of Śrī Madhvācārya which is based on Śrī Jayatīrtha’s subcommentary.
3 The Sanskrit text inside parentheses is from Madhvācārya’s Brahma-sūtra-bhāṣya 2.1.5.
4 A modern scientific skeptic might allege that this is just a clever cop-out. But it isn’t, because there is no social engineering involved among intellectual practitioners within bona fide traditions of Vedic knowledge since Vedic conclusions are subject to independent verification. The same can’t actually be said regarding modern scientific “knowledge,” as noted by two sociologists of science from the United Kingdom: “Every classroom in which children are conducting the same experiment in unison is a microcosm of frontier science. Each such multiple encounter with the natural world is a self-contained sociological experiment in its own right. Think about what happens: the teacher asks the class to discover the boiling point of water by inserting a thermometer into a beaker and taking a reading when the water is steadily boiling. One thing is certain: almost no-one will get 100 °C unless they already know the answer, and they are trying to please the teacher. Skip will get 102 °C, Tania will get 105 °C, Johnny will get 99.5 °C, Mary will get 100.2 °C, Zonker will get 54 °C, while Brian will not quite manage to get a result; Smudger will boil the beaker dry and burst the thermometer. Ten minutes before the end of the experiment the teacher will gather these scientific results and start the social engineering. Skip had his thermoter in a bubble of superheated steam when he took his reading, Tania had some impurities in her water, Johnny did not allow the beaker to come fully to the boil, Mary’s result showed the effect of slightly increased atmospheric pressure above sea-level, Zonker, Brian and Smudger have not yet achieved the status of fully competent research scientists. At the end of the lesson, each child will be under the impression that their experiment has proved that water boils at exactly 100 °C, or would have done were it not for a few local difficulties that do not affect the grown-up world of science and technology, with its fully trained personnel and perfected apparatus. That ten minutes renegotiation of what really happened is the important thing. If only, now and again, teachers and their classes would pause to reflect on that ten minutes they could learn most of what there is to know about the sociology of science. For that ten minutes illustrates better the tricks of professional frontier science than any university or commercial laboratory with its well-ordered predictable results. Eddington, Michelson, Morley, Weber, Davis, Fleischmann, Pons, Jones, McConnel, Ungar, Crews, Pasteur and Pouchet are Skips, Tanias, Johnnys, Marys, Zonkers, Brians, and Smudgers with clean white coats and ‘PhD’ after their names. They all come up with wildly varying results. There are theorists hovering around, like the schoolteacher, to explain and try to reconcile. In the end, however, it is the scientific community (the head teacher?) who brings order to this chaos, transmuting the clumsy antics of the collective Golem Science into a neat and tidy methodological myth. There is nothing wrong with this; the only sin is not knowing that it is always thus.” (“Conclusion,” The Golem: What you should know about science by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Second Edition) In the book, this quote appears as two paragraphs which have been merged here to aid layout.
These words are unhealthy because they lead to distress. Rāmacandra thus criticizes Jābāli’s statement.
NOTE. Why does Jābāli’s words lead to distress? Because non-acceptance of Vedic authority will lead to social violence and hence distress. How this is so is rationally delineated by Śrī Madhvācārya in his Gītā-bhāṣya (2.13) which is presented below with a paraphrase in English:
[śruteḥ prāmāṇyaṁ] na ca bauddhādivat. apauruṣeyatvāt. na hy apauruṣeye pauruṣeyājñānādayaḥ kalpayituṁ śakyāḥ. vinā ca kasyacit vākyasyāpauruṣeyatvaṁ sarva-samayābhimata-dharmādy-asiddhiḥ. yaś ca tau nāṅgīkurute nāsau samayī. aprayojakatvāt.
“The validity of Śruti cannot be disputed as in the case of statements made by the Buddhist or the Cārvāka, for the Śrutis are unauthored and it is not permissible to attribute human defects such as ignorance, organic defects, intention to mislead and so on, to an unauthored source of knowledge [such as the Śruti].1 Further, without accepting some authoritative statement as unauthored, it will not be possible to prove the binding character of and sanction behind supersensuous values of right and wrong which are accepted by the thinking section of humanity. No philosopher who refuses to acknowledge these values can be recognized as a thinker or a system-builder worth his pains, for in the absence of acceptance of such supersensuous values the system of thought propounded by him will be futile.”
māstu dharmo ’nirūpyatvād iti cen na. sarvābhimatasya pramāṇaṁ vinā niṣeddhum aśakyatvāt. na ca siddhir aprāmāṇikasyeti cen na. sarvābhimater eva pramāṇatvāt. anyathā sarva-vācika-vyavahārāsiddheś ca. na ca mayā śrutam iti tava jñātuṁ śakyam. anyathā vā pratyuttaraṁ syāt. bhrāntir vā syāt. sarva-duḥkha-kāraṇatvaṁ vā syāt. eko vānyathā syāt.
“One cannot argue irresponsibly, ‘Let there be no right or wrong as there is no evidence of their presence.’ The universal acceptance of right and wrong, the moral and the immoral, is sufficient proof of their existence. Universally accepted values cannot be negated without convincing proofs. It cannot be that their prevalence is delusive. Universal acceptance of a value is itself proof of its authenticity. If the validity of reliable testimony or inference as such is disputed, there will be an end to all commerce of life based on inference or the spoken and written word. It is only after knowing for certain that X hears him correctly that Y can speak to him purposefully. Since what passes in the mind of one is hidden from another, one can only go by the indications given by the reaction to one’s words by another in holding further commerce with him. A doubting Thomas can have nothing but delusion facing him all around. Moreover, the negation of values of right and wrong in life would open the door to unmitigated misery all around, by leading to a reign of terror, promiscuity and exploitation of the weak by the strong.”
racitatve ca dharma-pramāṇasya kartur ajñānādi-doṣa-śaṅkā syāt. na cādoṣatvaṁ sva-vākyenaiva siddhyati. na ca yena kenacid apauruṣeyam ity uktam ukta-vākya-samam. anādi-kāla-parigraha-siddhatvāt. ataḥ prāmāṇyaṁ śruteḥ.
One has thus ultimately to accept the existence of the moral values of right and wrong. The sanction behind such values has, in the final analysis, to be traced to an unauthored source. To derive such sanction from an author is to expose it to defects to which an author is necessarily liable. In such cases, it is not possible to assert its irrefragability on one’s own personal authority. One need not fear on that account that anyone can get away with tall claims of unauthored authority to whatever words or statements he may choose to exalt to such a status. The authoritativeness of the Vedas as unauthored sources of dharma goes back to honored acceptance from beginningless time. Hence the validity of the Vedas.2
But one might still object that sometimes, if not always, miscarriages of results are seen in the performance of rites prescribed by the Śruti scriptures. The Vedānta-sūtra dṛśyate tu (2.1.5) responds to this by emphasizing that the results promised by the Śruti are experienced by competent persons who fulfill all the requisite conditions for those rites (dṛśyate tu adhikāriṇāṁ phalam).3 And it is a fact that such competent human beings are rare: vedokto hy adhikāras tu durlabhaḥ sarva-mānuṣaiḥ (Madhvācārya’s Anuvyākhyāna 2.1.9). Why are they rare? Because very few are willing to take up the sādhana or rigorous discipline to become fully qualified to attain their cherished purposes through Vedic dharma.4