SankarAcArya's bhagavad gItA bhAshya: 2. 19-20

[Charles Wikner]

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999 Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

> na jAyate mriyate vA kadAcin na ayaM bhUtvA abhavitA vA na bhUyaH |
> ajo nityaS SASvato 'yaM purANo na hanyate hanyamAne SarIre || 2. 20 ||
>...
> He is never born, never does he die; nor again does he cease to exist,
> having once come into being. Unborn, Eternal, Permanent, Ancient, he is not
> killed when the body is killed.

A few points on the second pAda:

(1) While Warrier has an avagraha negating bhavitA, four other
    editions to hand, as well as Jacob's Concordance, show a
    space (i.e. bhavitA without the negation).  Which form is
    generally accepted as correct?

(2) I usually consider dhAtu /bhU as punctual and dhAtu /as as
    durative/stative (that's personal, and may be wrong!), so I
    have difficulty associating /bhU with the Immutable.  Since
    /as does not have all lakAra and /bhU fills in the gaps, can
    one treat bhUtvA and bhavitA as derived from /as rather than
    /bhU, to replace "come into being" (which jars) with "been"?
    (e.g....having [always] existed, It will not cease to exist.)

(3) My understanding of Sankara's comment on "vA na" is that the
    converse also holds true, i.e. having [never] existed, it
    will not come into existence.  This seems to echo verse 16.
    (Possibly translate "vA na" as "and vice versa".)

This verse (and a few others in the gItA) are in anuSTubh meter:
is there any significance or explanation for this?

I am thoroughly enjoying this series of posts - thanks for sharing them!

Regards, Charles.