Gautama says also that ascetics, according to some teachers, need not be householders first (3. 1), and that the Brahman ascetic stays at home during the rainy season, like the heretic monks (ib. 13).  If one examine the relative importance of the forms and spirit of religion as taught in this, the oldest dharma-s[=u]tra,[19] he will be impressed at first with the tremendous weight laid on the former as compared with the latter.  But, as was said apropos of the Brahmanic literature, one errs who fails to appreciate the fact that these works are intended not to give a summary of religious conduct, but to inculcate ceremonial rules.  Of the more importance, therefore, is the occasional pause which is made to insist, beyond peradventure, on the superiority of moral rules.  A very good instance of this is found in Gautama.  He has a list of venial sins.  Since lying is one of the most heinous offences to a Hindu lawgiver, and the penances are severe, all the treatises state formally that an untruth uttered in fun, or when one is in danger, or an oath of the sort implied by Plato:  [Greek:  aphrodision orkon ou phasin einai],—­all these are venial, and so are lies told to benefit a (holy) cow, or to aid a priest; or told from religious motives of any sort without self-interest.  This is almost the only example of looseness in morals as taught in the law.  But the following case shows most plainly the importance of morality as opposed to formal righteousness.  After all the forty sacraments (to which allusion was made above), have been recounted, there are given ‘eight good qualities of the soul,’ viz., mercy, forbearance, freedom from envy, purity, calmness, correct behavior, freedom from greed and from covetousness.  Then follows:  “He that has (performed) the forty sacraments but has not the eight good qualities enters not into union with Brahm[=a], nor into the heaven of Brahm[=a].[20] But he that has (performed) only a part of the forty sacraments and has the eight good qualities enters into union with Brahm[=a], and into the heaven of Brahm[=a].”  This is as near to heresy as pre-buddhistic Brahmanism permitted itself to come.

In the later legal S[=u]tra of the northern Vasistha[21] occurs a rule which, while it distinctly explains what is meant by liberality, viz., gifts to a priest, also recognizes the ‘heavenly reward’:  “If gifts are given to a man that does not know the Veda the divinities are not satisfied” (3. 8).  In the same work (6. 1) ‘destruction’ is the fate of the sinner that lives without observance of good custom; yet is it said in the same chapter (27):  “If a twice-born man dies with the food of a C[=u]dra (lowest caste) in his belly, he would become a village pig, or he is born again in that (C[=u]dra’s) family”; and, in respect to sons begotten when he has in him such food:  “Of whom the food, of him are these sons; and he himself would not mount to heaven ... he does not find the upward path” (29, 28).  In ib.