1.3.40
Brahma Sūtra / Adhyāya 1 / 1.3.40
कम्पनात्
kampanāt
The line
Because of the trembling of the whole world, this breath is Brahman (ब्रह्मन्).
नेपालीमा
सारा संसार हल्लिएकाले यो प्राण ब्रह्म हो।
Where it sits
A new passage. The eligibility discussion has closed. brahman (ब्रह्मन्) from 1.1.1 is the predicate again. Śaṅkara (शङ्कर) takes this prāṇa (प्राण), the one in which everything trembles, as Brahman (ब्रह्मन्) by the context and by the trembling. Rāmānuja (रामानुज) reads the same trembling as the world's fear of the thumb-sized person, whom the word breath designates. Madhva takes the one feared as Viṣṇu (विष्णु). All three refuse the bodily breath.
Split: kampanāt (कम्पनात्)
Sanskrit, in depth
The words
| Word | Grammar | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| kampanāt (कम्पनात्) | ablative singular, neuter | because of the trembling |
The phrases
A new passage. The Kaṭha (कठ) says that whatever there is, the whole world, trembles in breath. A great fear, like a raised thunderbolt. Those who knew it became deathless. From fear of it fire burns, the sun shines, and death runs.
kampana is the trembling. The whole world trembling in it, and the deathlessness of the one who knows it, are marks of brahman (ब्रह्मन्), not of the air in the nostrils. The context on either side is the person who is to be known. The bodily breath does not hold the world in fear.
Sanskrit in this line
One ablative. kampana is neuter, from kamp, 'to tremble'. The subject, prāṇa (प्राण), is understood from the passage, as often in a one-word sūtra (सूत्र).
Say it back
Say the picture: the world trembles in it, fire burns from fear of it. That it is not the breath in the chest.