The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c24.11

v1.c24.11

The physical nature of sin accounts for the fact that it can be conferred by others without any act of human volition on the part of him whom it attacks; the bird of Nirṛti bearing the infection can pass it upon men:¹ when the sin of the slaying of a Brahman falls on Indra he successively manages to pass it off on a series of other kinds of beings. The gods wipe sin off on Trita and he on men.² The victim at the sacrifice by its lowing or tearing the ground with its feet creates a sin which passes on to those around.³ The wailing of the women at the house of the dead produces by itself a sin.⁴ Sin is brought upon men by others, and even by the gods:⁵ it is inherited from the father or other relative and made by one self.⁶ But this process of transfer has an obvious advantage; even as man may be affected by sin without action of his own, so he can transfer sin or even a good deed⁷ to others, and so get rid not merely of sins which have been passed on to him, but also of sins which he himself has committed. The absence of the element of consciousness explains also why it is possible for sins to be committed even in sleep.⁸ There is no essential distinction when the sin is spoken of as a fetter: the fetters of death, the fetters of sickness, or the fetters of Nirṛti seem to convey no more meaning than the natural comparison of the constraint, which is put on man by sin in its physical aspect, with the fetters imposed by man for a civil crime, although the use of such metaphors must have aided the growth of the idea that the fetters are imposed by a god, as when the gods are besought not to catch men as in a net.⁹