The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s10.49

v2.c40.s10.49

The account is divided naturally into two parts. The first is the theory of the five fires, which is an account apparently of the mode in which the soul on death passes immediately, without intermediate reward or punishment, into the new body. The burning of the body on death is here taken by a new turn of thought as the offering of sacrifice, and the essential part of the offering, the action of man, is figured as the waters, which are offered with faith; hence the faith takes the place of the waters as the expression for the part which transmigrates. The faith, which thus ascends in the form of the sacrificial vapour to the gods, is by them offered in the heaven, the atmosphere, the earth, the man, and the woman as sacrificial fires, changing thus first to the Soma, then to rain, then to food, then to seed,⁴ and then to the embryo, and then receiving existence afresh. The mythical character of the whole is obvious, and reminds us that the new doctrine of action as determining the future life was decidedly disadvantageous to the sacrificial priest, and that it was natural to reserve it as a holy mystery.