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Īśopaniṣad with Śaṅkara's bhāṣya · 16
pūṣann ekarṣe yama sūrya prājāpatya vyūha raśmīn samūha tejaḥ | yat te rūpaṃ kalyāṇatamaṃ tat te paśyāmi yo 'sāv asau puruṣaḥ so 'ham asmi
Translation. O Pūṣan, O lone traveler, O Controller, O Sun, O offspring of Prajāpati,
remove your rays; draw together the scorching radiance.
That form of yours which is most beautiful—by your grace, I behold that.
He who is yonder in the solar orb—that Person (puruṣa) there—
I am he.
Grammar check: 23 words pass / 0 flagged / 0 beyond the checkerPāṇini-verified
Every word's claimed grammar is re-derived with vidyut-prakriya, software implementing Pāṇini's rules. Flags are shown, never hidden; some are the text taking epic or Vedic liberties the classical rules do not generate.
Word by word
| surface | lemma | grammar |
|---|
| pūṣan | pūṣan | pass |
| ekarṣe | ekarṣi | pass |
| yama | yama | pass |
| sūrya | sūrya | pass |
| prājāpatya | prājāpatya | pass |
| vyūha | ūh | pass |
| raśmīn | raśmi | pass |
| samūha | ūh | pass |
| tejaḥ | tejas | pass |
| yat | yad | pass |
| te | tvad | pass |
| rūpam | rūpa | pass |
| kalyāṇatamam | kalyāṇatama | pass |
| tat | tad | pass |
| te | tvad | pass |
| paśyāmi | paś | pass |
| yaḥ | yad | pass |
| asau | adas | pass |
| asau | adas | pass |
| puruṣaḥ | puruṣa | pass |
| saḥ | tad | pass |
| aham | mad | pass |
| asmi | as | pass |
How the commentary settled it
Where the verse alone is ambiguous, the reading follows Śaṅkara's commentary; the deciding lines are quoted below each decision.
The opening five expressions are singular vocatives addressed to the solar deity. Their contextual senses are Pūṣan as nourisher, ekarṣi as the one who travels alone, Yama as controller, Sūrya as Sun, and prājāpatya as offspring of Prajāpati.→ Follow Śaṅkara’s repeated vocative glosses and definitions; translate the semantically transparent titles while retaining Pūṣan and Sūrya as names.
isup [1]he pūṣan! jagataḥ poṣaṇātpūṣā ravistathaika eva ṛṣati gacchati ityekarṣiḥ-- he ekarṣe! tathā sarvasya saṃyamanādyamaḥ-- he yama! tathā raśmīnāṃ prāṇānāṃ rasānāñca svīkaraṇāt sūryaḥ-- he sūrya! prajāpaterapatyaṃ prājāpatyaḥ-- he prājāpatya! vyūha vigamaya raśmīnsvān /
‘O Pūṣan!’—he is Pūṣan, the Sun, because he nourishes the world. He alone travels or goes, hence ekarṣi: ‘O ekarṣi!’ Likewise, because he controls everything, he is Yama: ‘O Yama!’ Because he takes in rays, vital breaths, and essences, he is Sūrya: ‘O Sūrya!’ Prājāpatya is the offspring of Prajāpati: ‘O prājāpatya!’ Remove your own rays.
ekarṣe is one compound vocative from the stem ekarṣi, not eka followed by a locative ṛṣe. The relation is analyzed as karmadhāraya, eka eva ṛṣiḥ, with ṛṣi interpreted by Śaṅkara’s verbal nirvacana ‘one who travels.’→ Karmadhāraya ekarṣi, because the commentary explicitly treats ekarṣi as one name and immediately supplies the vocative he ekarṣe; eka qualifies the agent expressed by ṛṣi.
isup [1]tathaika eva ṛṣati gacchati ityekarṣiḥ-- he ekarṣe!
Likewise, he alone travels, goes; therefore he is ekarṣi—‘O ekarṣi!’
vyūha and samūha are active second-person singular imperatives with distinct objects: remove the rays, then gather together or withdraw the scorching radiance.→ The commentary explicitly glosses vyūha as vigamaya with raśmīn svān, and samūha as ekīkuru; tejaḥ is explained as scorching light. Line 2’s unproofread upasaṃharate… is likely a loss of spacing for upasaṃhara tejas…, but samūha ekīkuru independently secures the principal sense.
isup [1]vyūha vigamaya raśmīnsvān /
Vyūha: cause your own rays to go away.
isup [2]samūha ekīkuru upasaṃharate tejastāpakaṃ jyotiḥ /
Samūha: make into one, withdraw; tejas is scorching light. The transmitted unsegmented upasaṃharate tejastāpakaṃ is probably to be read across word boundaries as upasaṃhara tejas tāpakaṃ.
yat te rūpaṃ kalyāṇatamaṃ is treated as an accusative left-dislocated object phrase resumed by accusative tat. The first te is possessive genitive ‘of yours’; Śaṅkara construes the second genitive te with an understood prasāda, yielding ‘by your grace.’→ Accusative agreement gives a coherent resumed-object construction with paśyāmi. Both te forms are genitive, as shown by tava; the second receives Śaṅkara’s more specific construal tavātmanaḥ prasādāt, ‘by your own grace.’
isup [3]yatte tava rūpaṃ kalyāṇatamam atyantaśobhanaṃ tatte tavātmanaḥ prasādāt paśyāmi /
That form of yours which is most beautiful—exceedingly lovely—that I behold by the grace of you yourself.
kalyāṇatamam is translated ‘most beautiful,’ not primarily ‘most auspicious.’→ ‘Most beautiful,’ because Śaṅkara’s direct gloss is atyantaśobhanam, ‘exceedingly lovely.’
isup [3]kalyāṇatamam atyantaśobhanaṃ
Most beautiful: exceedingly lovely.
puruṣaḥ denotes the cosmic solar Person situated in the sun’s disk, and so ’ham asmi asserts the speaker’s identity with him. It is not merely a servant’s petition to see an external deity.→ Translate puruṣa as the technical ‘Person (puruṣa)’ and take so ’ham asmi literally as ‘I am he.’ Śaṅkara explicitly rejects the stance of a servant begging a master and glosses asmi with bhavāmi.
isup [4]kiñcāhaṃ na tu tvāṃ bhṛtyavadyāce yo 'sāvādityamaṇḍalastho vyāhṛtyavayavaḥ puruṣaḥ puruṣākāratvātpūrṇaṃ vānena prāṇabuddhayātmanā jagatsamastamiti puruṣaḥ puri śayanādvā puruṣaḥ so 'hamasmi bhavāmi
Moreover, I do not beg you like a servant. The Person who is yonder in the solar disk, whose limbs are the vyāhṛtis, is called puruṣa because he has a person-like form; or because the whole world is filled by him as life, intelligence, and self; or because he lies in the city. He am I—I become or am he.
The two occurrences of asau are retained separately: yaḥ asau means ‘he who is yonder,’ while the second asau deictically qualifies puruṣaḥ, ‘that Person there.’→ Give each nominative asau a syntactic role: the first is predicative with yaḥ, and the second modifies puruṣaḥ. This preserves every word of the checked mūla.
isup []
This distribution is based on the grammar of the received mūla; the commentary locates the referent in the solar disk but does not separately explain both demonstratives.
paśyāmi is translated as a present indicative, ‘I behold,’ rather than as ‘may I see.’→ The form is unambiguously Lat, first-person singular, active; a jussive English rendering would import a mood not expressed by the verb.
isup []
The decision follows the verbal morphology.
Śaṅkara's commentary on this unit
1he pūṣan! jagataḥ poṣaṇātpūṣā ravistathaika eva ṛṣati gacchati ityekarṣiḥ-- he ekarṣe! tathā sarvasya saṃyamanādyamaḥ-- he yama! tathā raśmīnāṃ prāṇānāṃ rasānāñca svīkaraṇāt sūryaḥ-- he sūrya! prajāpaterapatyaṃ prājāpatyaḥ-- he prājāpatya! vyūha vigamaya raśmīnsvān /
2samūha ekīkuru upasaṃharate tejastāpakaṃ jyotiḥ /
3yatte tava rūpaṃ kalyāṇatamam atyantaśobhanaṃ tatte tavātmanaḥ prasādāt paśyāmi /
4kiñcāhaṃ na tu tvāṃ bhṛtyavadyāce yo 'sāvādityamaṇḍalastho vyāhṛtyavayavaḥ puruṣaḥ puruṣākāratvātpūrṇaṃ vānena prāṇabuddhayātmanā jagatsamastamiti puruṣaḥ puri śayanādvā puruṣaḥ so 'hamasmi bhavāmi