The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s10.26

v2.c40.s10.26

This fear seems, as we have seen, to have developed in accordance with the desire to distinguish the diverse degrees of good acquired by different modes of sacrifice; it was obviously necessary to admit that every sacrificer would receive reward by admission to the happiness of the world to come, but the Brahmans had to consider the claims of the richer of their patrons, and had to promise them more in the world to come than the poorer, who offered and gave less. Hence we find that the need of food in the next world may be severely limited, according to the mode of offering: it can be unnecessary for a spirit to feed oftener than once in fourteen days, in four, six, or twelve months, or even once only in a hundred years, or even never at all. Again it is said that sacrifice to the gods produces less than offering to the self.⁶ Naciketas begs that he may be granted the privilege that his good deeds shall not decay,⁷ while it is said that day and night wear out the good deeds in the next world of one who does not know a certain rite.¹ The fear thus forms itself that in place of the desired immortality in the next world there will be renewed death, and many rites² are said to save from it, the Agnihotra, the Viṣūvant, the Naciketas fire, the piling of the fire, the study of the Veda. There can be no doubt that the repeated death is in the next world, not in this: it is applied to the Fathers,³ and from those who are born after death to immortality are distinguished those who are born to die again.⁴ The idea of the death as being a birth in the next world is not at all rare, as in the passage of the Aitareya Upaniṣad above mentioned, and the conception that death might there be repeated is a very natural one. It remained only to transfer it to the present world and the effect of transmigration was reached. But though this step is taken in the Upaniṣads it is by no means universally to be found there: there is no clear reference in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka or Upaniṣad, and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka⁵ has passages which quite clearly do not recognize it at all.