1.2.5
Mīmāṃsā Sūtra / Adhyāya 1 / 1.2.5
अभागिप्रतिषेधाच् च
abhāgipratiṣedhāc ca
The line
And because of a prohibition aimed at what has no share in the prohibition.
नेपालीमा
र निषेधमा भाग नभएकोतिर सोझिएको निषेधका कारण।
Where it sits
Ca continues the objector's list from 1.2.1. The useless sentence is still the subject. Pratiṣedha (प्रतिषेध), prohibition, is a kind of sentence that looks unlike a command to perform.
Split: abhāgi-pratiṣedhāt (अभागि-प्रतिषेधात्) + ca (च)
Sanskrit, in depth
The words
| Word | Grammar | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| abhāgi-pratiṣedhāt (अभागि-प्रतिषेधात्) | ablative singular, masculine | because of a prohibition of what has no share in being prohibited |
| ca (च) | indeclinable | and |
The phrases
A sentence says the fire is not to be piled on the earth, nor in the midspace, nor in the sky. The piling is the agnicayana, the building of the fire-altar with bricks. Everyone already knows the altar is not built in the sky or in the air between.
The objector says the sentence prohibits a thing that is not a fit object of prohibition. It also disturbs the real injunction, that one should pile after laying down gold. A sentence that would throw another injunction into confusion, and is itself confused, is not a means of knowing. If it is not a means, there is no real conflict. The line counts it among the passages that do no clean work.
Sanskrit in this line
Abhāgin (अभागिन्) is one who does not possess a bhāga (भाग), a share. Here the share is fitness to be the object of a prohibition. The compound is the prohibition that concerns that unfit object.
Say it back
Explain the altar in plain words, and say why 'do not pile it in the sky' looks like a prohibition of nothing.