श्रीवसिष्ठ उवाच । कुत आयाति कीदृग्वा वन्ध्यापुत्रः क्व गच्छति । क्व याति कुत आयाति वद वा व्योमकाननम् ॥ २ ॥
śrīvasiṣṭha uvāca | kuta āyāti kīdṛgvā vandhyāputraḥ kva gacchati | kva yāti kuta āyāti vada vā vyōmakānanam || 2 ||
Translation
Vasiṣṭha said: Where does a barren woman's son come from, and of what kind is he, and where does he go? Or tell me: where does a forest in the sky go, and where does it come from?
Word by word
- kuta
- (kutaḥ) from where
- āyāti
- does (he) come
- kīdṛg
- (kīdṛk) of what kind
- vā
- or, and
- vandhyā
- of a barren woman
- putraḥ
- the son
- kva
- where
- gacchati
- does (he) go
- yāti
- does (it) go
- vada
- tell (me)
- vyōma
- in the sky
- kānanam
- a forest
Meaning
Vasiṣṭha answers a question with a question. The commentary explains the move: if, at the arising of all things, the world came from somewhere with a being of its own, then at the dissolution it would go somewhere else and stay there. But like a barren woman's son, it has no separate being with which to come; so Vasiṣṭha asks Rāma to say where such a son comes from. The barren woman's son and the forest in the sky are the stock examples of what is utterly unreal (atyanta-asat): not things that once were and are now gone, but things that never were. To ask where they go is to see at once that the question has no ground. Vasiṣṭha does not yet say that the world is like them; he lets Rāma say it.