[Footnote 3:  Poussin’s Theorie des Douze Causes, p. 23.

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birth [Footnote ref 1].  The manner in which the vijnana produced in the womb is determined by the past vijnana of the previous existence is according to some authorities of the nature of a reflected image, like the transmission of learning from the teacher to the disciple, like the lighting of a lamp from another lamp or like the impress of a stamp on wax.  As all the skandhas are changing in life, so death also is but a similar change; there is no great break, but the same uniform sort of destruction and coming into being.  New skandhas are produced as simultaneously as the two scale pans of a balance rise up and fall, in the same manner as a lamp is lighted or an image is reflected.  At the death of the man the vijnana resulting from his previous karmas and vijnanas enters into the womb of that mother (animal, man or the gods) in which the next skandhas are to be matured.  This vijnana thus forms the principle of the new life.  It is in this vijnana that name (nama) and form (rupa) become associated.

The vijnana is indeed a direct product of the sa@mskaras and the sort of birth in which vijnana should bring down (namayati) the new existence (upapatti) is determined by the sa@mskaras [Footnote ref 2], for in reality the happening of death (mara@nabhava) and the instillation of the vijnana as the beginning of the new life (upapattibhava) cannot be simultaneous, but the latter succeeds just at the next moment, and it is to signify this close succession that they are said to be simultaneous.  If the vijnana had not entered the womb then no namarupa could have appeared [Footnote ref 3].

This chain of twelve causes extends over three lives.  Thus avidya and sa@mskara of the past life produce the vijnana, namarupa,

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[Footnote 1:  The deities of the gardens, the woods, the trees and the plants, finding the master of the house, Citta, ill said “make your resolution, ‘May I be a cakravartti king in a next existence,’” Sa@myutta, IV. 303.]

[Footnote 2:  “sa cedanandavijnana@m matu@hkuk@sim navakrameta, na tat kalalam kalalatvaya sannivartteta,” M.  V. 552.  Compare Caraka, S’arira, III. 5-8, where he speaks of a “upapiduka sattva” which connects the soul with body and by the absence of which the character is changed, the senses become affected and life ceases, when it is in a pure condition one can remember even the previous births; character, purity, antipathy, memory, fear, energy, all mental qualities are produced out of it.  Just as a chariot is made by the combination of many elements, so is the foetus.]

[Footnote 3:  Madhyamaka v@riti (B.T.S. 202-203).  Poussin quotes from Digha, II. 63, “si le vijnana ne descendait pas dans le sein maternel la namarupa s’y constituerait-il?” Govindananda on S’a@nkara’s commentary on the Brahma-sutras (II. ii. 19) says that the first consciousness (vijnana) of the foetus is produced by the sa@mskaras of the previous birth, and from that the four elements (which he calls nama) and from that the white and red, semen and ovum, and the first stage of the foetus (kalala-budbudavastha} is produced.]