to dwell together in the body.  Or, this body made up of the five (primal) essences is only a combination (that must dissolve away).  The eighteen attributes (including Avidya), with him that owneth the body, and counting stomachic heat numbering twentieth in the tale, form that which is known as the Combination of the Five.  There is a Being called Mahat, which, with the aid of the wind (called Prana), upholds this combination containing the twenty things that have been named, and in the matter of the destruction of that body the wind (which is generally spoken of as the cause) is only the instrument in the hands of that same Mahat.  Whatever creature is born is resolved once more into the five constituent elements upon the exhaustion of his merits and demerits; and urged again by the merits and demerits won in that life enters into another body resulting from his acts.[1318] His abodes always resulting from Avidya, desire, and acts, he migrates from body to body, abandoning one after another repeatedly, urged on by Time, like a person abandoning house after house in succession.  They that are wise, and endued with certainty of knowledge, do not give way to grief upon beholding this (migration).  Only they that are foolish, erroneously supposing relationships (where relationship in reality there is none) indulge in grief at sight of such changes of abode.  This Jiva is no one’s relation; there is none again that may be said to belong to him.  He is always alone, and he himself creates his own body and his own happiness and misery.  This Jiva is never born, nor doth he ever die.  Freed from the bond of body, he succeeds sometimes in attaining to the highest end.  Deprived of body, because freed through the exhaustion of acts from bodies that are the results of merits and demerits, Jiva at last attains to Brahma.  For the exhaustion of both merits and demerits, Knowledge has been ordained as the cause in the Sankhya school.  Upon the exhaustion of merit and demerit, when Jiva attains to the status of Brahma,[1319] (they that are learned in the scriptures) behold (with the eye of the scriptures) the attainment of Jiva to the highest end.’”

SECTION CCLXXVI

“Yudhishthira said, ’Cruel and sinful that we are, alas, we have slain brothers and sires and grandsons and kinsmen and friends and sons.  How, O grandsire, shall we dispel this thirst for wealth.  Alas, through that thirst we have perpetrated many sinful deeds.’

“Bhishma said, ’In this connection is cited the old narrative of what was said by the ruler of the Videhas unto the enquiring Mandavya.  The ruler of the Videhas said, ’I have nothing (in this world), yet I live in great happiness.  If the whole of Mithila (which is said to be my kingdom) burn in a conflagration, nothing of mine will be burnt down.  Tangible possessions, however valuable, are a source of sorrow to men of knowledge; while possessions of even little value fascinate the foolish.[1320]