s mendicant
guest.

12. All the possessions of a man depend upon the acts of a previous life.
Wives, children and kinsmen, therefore, as agents of happiness or the
reverse, depend upon one's past acts. They are effects of pre-existing
causes. Then again, they may be causes of effects to be manifested in the
next life, for their acts also are supposed to affect the next life of
him to whom they belong.

13. i.e., they for whom he acts do not take the consequences of his acts.

14. Bhagena is explained by Nilakantha as swargaisysaryena.

15. The sense is that as the Ordainer cannot be censured, therefore, that
which He has ordained for the Kshatriyas cannot be deserving of censure.

16. The meaning is that they who perform sacrifice and partake of the
sacrificial food after offering it unto gods and guests, acquire such
religious merit that the like of it cannot be acquired by other men.
Sacrifice, therefore, is the highest act in life and the most meritorious
that man can do.

17. The iti after vadi is really eti, the absence of sandhi in the proper
form is Arsha. Literally rendered, the line becomes,--According to the
manner in which the person of firm conviction approaches the Soul, is the
success that he gets here. As the Srutis declare, if one firmly regards
oneself to be Siva, the success one attains here and hereafter is after
the kind of that deity.

18. The brevity of such passages is the chief obstacle to their clear
comprehension. Fortunately the allusions are very plain. What is meant is
that those who die during the lighted fortnights of the summer solstice
attain to solar regions of bliss. Those that die during the dark
fortnights of the winter solstice, attain to lunar regions. These last
have to return after passing their allotted periods of enjoyment and
happiness. While those that are freed from attachments, whatever the time
of their Death, go to Stellar regions which are equal to that of Brahma.

19. Without attaining to the companionship of the gods and Pitris, and
without obtaining Brahma, they sink in the scale of being and become
worms and vermin.

20. The sense is that the gods themselves have become so by action.

21. The first word is compounded of an and astika.

22. Deva-yana is the Yana or way along which the deities have gone, the
strict observance of the Vedic rites.

23. Renouncer of his own self, because he dries up his very body by
denying himself food.

24. Such a person