able to place me, or is it the other way, and are you going to place me
in the world to which that other way leads?"[14]

He answered and said: "I do not know this. But, let me ask the master."
Having approached his father, he asked: "Thus has Kitra asked me; how
shall I answer?"

Aruni said: "I also do not know this. Only after having learnt the
proper portion of the Veda in Kitra's own dwelling, shall we obtain what
others give us, i.e., knowledge. Come, we will both go."

Having said this he took fuel in his hand, like a pupil, and approached
Kitra Gangyayani, saying: "May I come near to you?" He replied: "You are
worthy of Brahman, O Gautama, because you were not led away by pride.
Come hither, I shall make you know clearly."

And Kitra said: "All who depart from this world go to the moon. In the
former, the bright half, the moon delights in their spirits; in the
other, the dark half, the moon sends them on to be born again. Verily,
the moon is the door of the Svarga, i.e., the heavenly world. Now, if a
man objects to the moon and is not satisfied with life there, the moon
sets him free. But if a man does not object, then the moon sends him
down as rain upon this earth. And according to his deeds and according
to his knowledge he is born again here as a worm, or as an insect, or as
a fish, or as a bird, or as a lion, or as a boar, or as a serpent, or as
a tiger, or as a man, or as something else in different places. When he
has thus returned to the earth, someone, a sage, asks: 'Who art thou?'
And he should answer: 'From the wise moon, who orders the seasons, when
it is born consisting of fifteen parts, from the moon who is the home of
our ancestors, the seed was brought. This seed, even me, they, the gods,
mentioned in the Pankagnividya, gathered up in an active man, and
through an active man they brought me to a mother. Then I, growing up to
be born, a being living by months, whether twelve or thirteen, was
together with my father, who also lived by years of twelve or thirteen
months, that I might either know the true Brahman or not know it.
Therefore, O ye seasons, grant that I may attain immortality, i.e.,
knowledge of Brahman. By this my true saying, by this my toil, beginning
with the dwelling in the moon and ending with my birth on earth, I am
like a season, and the child of the seasons.' 'Who art thou?' the sage
asks again. 'I am thou,' he replies. Then he sets him free to proceed
onward.

"He, at the t