olish understanding who steals ghee has to take birth as a
gallinule. That wicked person who steals fish has to take birth as a
crow. By stealing salt one has to take birth as a mimicking bird. That
man who misappropriates what is deposited with him through confidence,
has to sustain a diminution in the period of his life, and after death
has to take birth among fishes. Having lived for some time as a fish he
dies and regains the human form. Regaining, however, the status of
humanity, he becomes short-lived. Indeed, having committed sins, O
Bharata, one has to take birth in an order intermediate between that of
humanity and vegetables. Those people are entirely unacquainted with
righteousness which has their own hearts for its authority. Those men
that commit diverse acts of sin and then seek to expiate them by
continuous vows and observances of piety, become endued with both
happiness and misery and live in great anxiety of heart.[517] Those men
that are of sinful conduct and that yield to the influence of cupidity
and stupefaction, without doubt, take birth as Mlechchhas that do not
deserve to be associated with. Those men on the other hand, who abstain
from sin all their lives, become free from disease of every kind, endued
with beauty of form and possessed of wealth. Women also, when they act in
the way indicated, attain to births of the same kind. Indeed, they have
to take births as the spouses of the animals I have indicated. I have
told thee all the faults that relate to the appropriation of what belongs
to others. I have discoursed to thee very briefly on the subject, O
sinless one. In connection with some other subject, O Bharata, thou shalt
again hear of those faults. I heard all this, O king, in days of old,
from Brahman himself, and I asked all about it in a becoming way, when he
discoursed on it in the midst of the celestial Rishis. I have told thee
truly and in detail all that thou hadst asked me. Having listened to all
this, O monarch, do thou always set thy heart on righteousness."'"

SECTION CXII

"'Yudhishthira said, "Thou hast told me, O regenerate one, what the end is
of unrighteousness or sin. I desire now to hear, O foremost of speakers,
of what the end is of Righteousness. Having committed diverse acts of
sin, by what acts of people succeed in attaining to an auspicious end in
this world? By what acts also do people attain to an auspicious end in
heaven?"

"'Vrihaspati said, "By committing s