Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 4. Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi: for the sake of the Self
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
The vina
As, when a vina is played, one cannot lay hold of the sounds that go out from it, but by laying hold of the vina, or of the one who plays it, the sound is grasped.
When a vina (lute) is being played, you cannot catch its outgoing sounds on their own; but by holding on to the vina, or the player, the sound is caught.
In the commentaries
The vina completes the figure. Each instrument says the same thing: the particular sounds are real only as the sounding of the one instrument, and they are known in the knowing of it.