184.35 Seventeen sorts of visible form are in fact enumerated. However, the six sorts of material objects outlined in 184.34cd are tactile qualities rather than visible qualities. It is likely that this half verse, which is only included at this point in six manuscripts of the Critical Edition’s apparatus, has been moved from an original position where it described touch. In the Critical Edition (xii.177.34ab) it is used to enumerate the different sorts of physical sensation that are derived from wind. It seems that an original passage on the qualities of visible form had been displaced in the texts on which Nilakantha based his edition of the “Maha·bharata.”

184.39 shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, dhaivata, panchama and nishada: these are the seven primary notes of the Indian musical scale, although panchama is usually placed before dhaivata.

185.4 On the term world self see the notes to 194.7 and 201.1. For other occurrences of this term, see 203.7, 204.5, 207.8 and 209.31. Its mention here is unusual but the verse is probably an interpolation, a fact that might be suggested by the appearance of aham/kara in a list of psychological functions (hence the translation “self-consciousness”) rather than as a cosmic principle as in 182.13 and 182.16. It would also be unusual to connect the subject of 185.4 with the pronoun sa in 185.5a, for that would suggest that the “cosmic self” is “circulated to all parts of the body.” The pronoun sa in 185.5a probably picks up the word prano in 185.3c.

187.2 On the belief that fire exists after it has been extinguished, see 192.6.

187.23 This verse is is omitted from the Critical Edition, being found in only thirteen of its Northern manuscripts. Furthermore, 187.23–26 have nothing to do with Bharad·vaja’s question about the existence of the soul, and 187.23 is the only place in the entire dialogue between Bhrigu and Bharad·vaja in which a material source of creation (“evolvents of primeval matter”) different from the absolute brahman is mentioned. This, as ________