Verse 3.7.121

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.7.121:

त्वमन्यो भवसीत्येषा तत्र स्यात् परिकल्पना ।
राज्ञि भृत्यत्वमापन्ने यथा तद्वद्गतिर्भवेत् ॥ १२१ ॥

tvamanyo bhavasītyeṣā tatra syāt parikalpanā |
rājñi bhṛtyatvamāpanne yathā tadvadgatirbhavet || 121 ||

121. Here, as in the case of a king becoming a servant, one would have to imagine something like: You are becoming something else.

Commentary

[It would be like the following example. In the sentence “rājan arājā sampadyase = ‘O king! you are becoming a nonking’ it is king who becomes non-king. The king is, therefore, the prakṛti, (the original material) and is in apposition to tvam which is understood from the verb. The king in the sentence is active and is the agent of the act of becoming non-king. Similarly, if the sentence were ‘tvadbhavasi’ tvam would become the agent of the act of attaining another state and so the meaning intended would not be conveyed. In order that it may be conveyed, the verb has been put in the first person. The sentence should not mean something different from what is intended. In ‘suvarṇapiṇḍaḥ kuṇḍale bhavataḥ’ = ‘the lump of gold becomes two gold ear-rings’, even when one understands that it is the two ear-rings which are the agents of the act of becoming because of the dual suffix in bhavataḥ nobody understands the opposite of what is intended. Nobody understands that the ear-rings become gold. Gold cannot be the agent of the action denoted by the root ‘bhū’ except, through its modification.]

If one who is independent (svatantra) is the agent, how can he remain so when he is made to do something by somebody else? This is now explained—