SECTION CCLV
"Bhishma said, 'Do thou, O son, O sinless one, listen once more, with
feelings of great pride, to the words that fell from the lips of the
Island-born Rishi on the subject of the enumeration of the entities. Like
unto a blazing fire (for having transcended all ignorance), the great
Rishi said these words unto his son who resembled a fire wrapped in
smoke.[1104] Instructed by what he said, I also, O son, shall again
expound to thee that certain knowledge (which dispels ignorance). The
properties possessed by earth are immobility, weight, hardness,
productiveness, scent, density, capacity to absorb scents of all kinds,
cohesion, habitableness (in respect of vegetables and animals), and that
attribute of the mind which is called patience of the capacity to bear.
The properties of water are coolness, taste, moisture, liquidity,
softness, agreeableness, tongue, fluidity, capacity to be congealed, and
power to melt many earthly products.[1105] The properties of fire are
irresistible energy, inflammability, heat, capacity t o soften, light,
sorrow, disease, speed, fury, and invariably upward motion. The
properties of the wind are touch that is neither hot nor cool, capacity
to assist the organ of speech, independence (in respect of motion),
strength, celerity, power to assist all kinds of emission or discharge,
power to raise other objects, breaths inhaled and exhaled, life (as the
attribute of Chit) and birth (including death). The properties of space
are sound, extension, capacity of being enclosed, absence of refuge for
resting upon absence of all necessity for such refuge, status of being
unmanifest, capacity for modification, incapacity for producing
resistance, material cause for producing the sense of hearing, and the
unoccupied portions of the human body. These are the fifty properties, as
declared, that constitute, the essence of the five elementary
entities.[1106] Patience, reasoning or disputation, remembrance,
forgetfulness or error, imagination, endurance, propensity towards good,
propensity towards evil, and restlessness,--these are the properties of
the mind. Destruction of both good and evil thoughts (i.e., dreamless
slumber), perseverance, concentration, decision, and ascertainment of all
things resting upon direct evidence, constitute the five properties of
the understanding.'
"Yudhishthira said, 'How can the understanding be said to have five
properties? How again, can the five senses be spoken of as properties (of
the five elementary entities)? Expound to me, O grandsire, all this that
seems to be very abstruse.'
"Bhishma said, 'The understanding is said to possess altogether sixty
properties, for the understanding includes the five elements.[1107] All
those properties exist in a state of union with the Soul. The Vedas
declare, O son, that the elements, their (fifty) properties (together
with the mind and the understanding and their nine and five properties)
are all created by Him who is above all deterioration. These (one and
seventy) entities, therefore, are not eternal (like the Soul). The
theories contradicting the Revelation that have in the previous Vedas, O
son, been placed before thee (about the origin of the Universe and its
other incidents) are all defective in the eye of reason. Carefully
attending, however, in this world to all that I have said unto thee about
the Supreme Brahma, do thou, after attaining to the puissance that the
knowledge of Brahma offers, seek to win tranquillity of heart.'"[1108]
