The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s10.89

v2.c40.s10.89

A further breach with the theory of Karman is to be seen in the case of the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad,³ which tells how the man who attains the Brahman after passing by the river of immortality casts away his good and his evil deeds, which his friends and enemies duly share, while he from his lofty position gazes calmly at good and evil deeds, and the contrasts of night and day. This idea, as Hopkins⁴ has shown, has a ritual origin: in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁵ we are told how the man who performs the Agnihotra after sunset and before sunrise escapes the fate which normally awaits men in the world to come, where the days and the nights gradually destroy their good deeds, and doom them in due course to that renewal of death which the Brahman regards as the worst of unhappinesses. Thus early it is clear the Karman doctrine had to face the competition of conflicting and doubtless older views, which never could be brought into real coincidence with it.