The History of Indian Literature c8.181

c8.181

We meet, moreover, in the Chhándogyopanishad with one of those legal cases which are so seldom mentioned in Vedic literature, viz., the infliction of capital punishment for (denied) theft, exactly corresponding to the severe enactments regarding it in Manu's code. Guilt or innocence is determined by an ordeal, the carrying of a red-hot axe; this also is analogous to the decrees in Manu. We find yet another connecting link with the state of culture in Manu's time in a passage occurring also in the Vṛihad-Áraṇyaka, viz., the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. We here meet with this doctrine for the first time, and that in a tolerably complete form; in itself, however, it must certainly be regarded as much more ancient. The circumstance that the myth of the creation in the fifth book is on the whole identical with that found at the beginning of Manu, is perhaps to be explained by regarding the latter as simply a direct imitation of the former. The tenth book, the subject of which is the soul, its seat in the body and its condition on leaving it, *i.e.*, its migration to the realm of Brahman, contains much that is of interest in this respect in connection with the above-mentioned parallel passage of the Kaushítaky-Upanishad, from which it differs in some particulars. Here also for the first time in the field of Vedic literature occurs the name Ráhu, which we may reckon among the proofs of the comparatively recent date of the Chhándogyopanishad.