Upanishads · Rāma-tāpanī Uttara 5.15
॥
Devanāgarī
अभक्ष्यभखक्षणोत्पन्नं मिथ्याज्ञानसमुद्भवम् । सर्वं विलीयते राम मन्त्रस्यास्यैव कीर्तनात्
Transliteration (IAST)
abhakṣyabhakhakṣaṇotpannaṃ mithyājñānasamudbhavam | sarvaṃ vilīyate rāma mantrasyāsyaiva kīrtanāt
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
अभक्ष्यभक्षणोत्पन्नम्abhakṣyabhakṣaṇotpannamarisen from eating the uneatable; sprung from consuming the forbidden
मिथ्याज्ञानसमुद्भवम्mithyājñānasamudbhavamsprung from false knowledge; born of wrong knowing
सर्वम् विलीयते रामsarvam vilīyate rāmaall dissolves, O Rāma; everything melts away, Rāma
मन्त्रस्य अस्य एव कीर्तनात्mantrasya asya eva kīrtanātfrom the proclaiming of this very mantra; from the repetition of just this mantra
Translation
“What is born of eating the forbidden, what springs from false knowledge — all of it dissolves from the proclaiming of this very mantra.”
Version
15cef6763dba · published Jul 29, 2026, 5:15:19 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
Two sins are named together, and their joining is instructive: forbidden food and false knowledge.
The first is material: what has entered the body. The second is mental: what has entered the reason.
Mithyā-jñāna, “false knowledge”, is in Vedānta the root of the whole trouble: not one sin among sins, but that from which sins grow. To take oneself for the body, to take one's own for one's own — that is it.
And now it is set in one row with forbidden food.
This is no lowering but exactness. Food and opinion enter equally unnoticed and equally change the one who has taken them in.
Note the verb: vilīyate — “it dissolves, melts, vanishes”. Not “is burnt”, as in the ninth verse, and not “perishes”, as in the eleventh.
Different verbs for different things. A heap of cotton burns; false knowledge does not burn — it melts, like salt in water: it has no substance of its own.