tification and theft of epithets then follows: "O
thou who art the Vedas, who art Revelation, who art virtue,
J[=a]tavedasi, ... thou art _brahma_ among the sciences, thou art the
sleep of incorporate beings, the mother of Skanda, the blessed one,
Durg[=a] ... thou art the mother of the Vedas and Ved[=a]nta ... thou
art sleep, illusion, modesty, happiness ... thou art satisfaction,
growth, contentment, light, the increaser of moon and sun."

Turning from these later parasites,[45] which live on their parent
gods and yet tend to reduce them, we now revert to that happiness
hereafter to which looks forward the epic knight that has not been
tempted to 'renounce' desire. In pantheistic passages he is what the
later remodeller makes him. But enough of old belief remains to show
that the warrior really cared a great deal more for heaven than he did
for absorption. As to the cause of events, as was said above, it is
Fate. Repeatedly is heard the lament, "Fate (impersonal) is the
highest thing, fie on vain human effort." The knight confesses with
his lips to a belief in the new doctrine of absorption, but at heart
he is a fatalist. And his aim is to die on the field of battle, that
he may go thence directly to the heaven that awaits the good and the
brave.[46] Out of a long description of this heaven a few extracts
here selected will show what the good knight anticipates:

"Upward goes the path that leads to gods; it is inhabited by
them that have sacrificed and have done penance. Unbelieving
persons and untruthful persons do not enter there; only they
that have duteous souls, that have conquered self, and
heroes that bear the marks of battle. There sit the seers
and gods, there are shining, self-illumined worlds, made of
light, resplendent. And in this heaven there is neither
hunger, nor thirst, nor weariness, nor cold, nor heat, nor
fear; nothing that is terrible is there, nothing unclean;
but pleasing sights, and sounds, and smells. There is no
care there, nor age, nor work, nor sorrow. Such is the
heaven that is the reward of good acts. Above this is
Brahm[=a]'s world, where sit the seers and the three and
thirty gods," etc.

Over against this array of advantages stands the one great "fault of
heaven," which is stated almost in the words of "nessun maggior
dolore," "the thought (when one lives again on the lower plane) of
former happiness in the highe