forest-hermit’s austerities (ib. 23. 4 ff.), verses from a Pur[=a]na are cited which are virtually Upanishadic:  ’The eight and eighty thousand seers who desired offspring (went) south on Aryaman’s path, and obtained (as their reward) graves; (but) the eight and eighty thousand who did not desire offspring (went) north on Aryaman’s path and make for themselves immortality,’ that is to say ’abandon desire for offspring; and of the two paths (which, as the commentator observes, are mentioned in the Ch[=a]ndogya Upanishad), that which gives immortality instead of death (graves) will be yours.’  It is admitted that such ascetics have miraculous powers; but the law-maker emphatically protests in the following S[=u]tra against the supposition that a rule which stands opposed to the received rites (marriage, sacrifice, etc.) is of any power, and asserts that for the future life an endless reward (’fruit’), called in revelation ‘heavenly,’ is appointed (ib. 8-11).  The next chapter, however, limits, as it were, this dogma, for it is stated that immortality is the re-birth of one’s self in the body of one’s son, and a verse is cited:  ’Thou procreatest progeny, and that’s thy immortality, O mortal,’ with other verses, which teach that sons that attend to the Vedic rites magnify the fame and heaven of their ancestors, who ‘live in heaven until the destruction of creation’ ([=a] bh[=u]tasamptav[=a]t, 2. 9. 24. 5), But ’according to the Bhavishyat-Pur[=a]na’ after this destruction of creation ’they exist again in heaven as the cause of seed’ (ib.) 6.  And then follows a quotation from the Father-god:  ’We live with those people who do these (following) things:  (attend to) the three Vedas, live as students, create children, sacrifice to the Manes, do penance, make sacrifice to the gods, practice liberality; he that extols anything else becomes air (or dust) and perishes’ (ib.) 8; and further:  ’only they that commit sin perish’ (not their ancestors).

The animus of this whole passage is apparent.  The law-maker has to contend with them that would reject the necessity of following in order the traditional stadia of a priest’s life; that imagine that by becoming ascetics without first having passed through the preliminary stadia they can by knowledge alone attain the bliss that is obtained by union with brahma (or Brahm[=a]).  In other words the jurist has to contend with a trait eminently anti-Brahmanistic, even Buddhistic.  He denies this value of knowledge, and therewith shows that what he wishes to have inculcated is a belief in the temporary personal existence of the Manes; in heaven till the end of the world-order; and the annihilation of the wicked; while he has a confused or mixed opinion in regard to one’s own personal immortality, believing on the one hand that there is a future existence in heaven with the gods, and on the other (rather a materialistic view) that immortality is nothing but continued existence