The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s10.20

v2.c40.s10.20

The Brāhmaṇas contain on the whole no acceptance of the doctrine of transmigration: the soul aims at the world of the Fathers as before: the mere fact¹ that as punishment for the cursing of a Brahman, the laying of violent hands on him, or the spilling of his blood, the wrong-doer is kept a hundred, a thousand years, as many years as the grains of dust moistened by his blood, from the world of the Fathers, shows that the view still prevailed that this world was the appointed place for the holy dead even as it is in the Rigveda. Nor in the main is that world distinct from heaven to which a man naturally goes but sometimes fails to reach, confused by the smoke of the fire which burned his body.² The conception of weighing the good and evil of a man in a balance and his following whichever is the greater,³ and that of two fires which hold back the wicked from the way of the gods or of the Fathers,⁴ do not carry us to any definite view other than that of the Rigveda, and the conception of men being discriminated as good or bad in the presence of Yama⁵ is equally unimportant. But a new and important motive appears in the growing fear of death even in the world to come.