Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 3, Brahmana 2. Artabhaga: where karma and death lead
New to these pages?
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 eight seizers
Then Jaratkarava Artabhaga asked him. Yajnavalkya, he said, how many are the seizers, and how many the over-seizers? Eight are the seizers, and eight the over-seizers, he answered. These eight seizers and eight over-seizers, which are they?
Artabhaga, of the line of Jaratkaru, questions Yajnavalkya: how many graha and how many atigraha are there? A graha is an organ that grasps, a seizer; an atigraha is the object that grasps the organ in turn, the over-seizer. Yajnavalkya says there are eight of each, and Artabhaga asks him to name them.