Samnyasa Upanishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s2.t6.22

c5.s2.t6.22

Humans' debts to gods and ancestors are also seen as related to the needs of gods and especially of ancestors. Gods feed on sacrificial oblations. Ancestors likewise depend on their sons and subsequent male descendants for ritual offerings of food and water. The needs, interpreted as rights, of gods and ancestors, therefore, create corresponding duties in humans. In a telling episode recorded in the *Mahābhārata* (3.94.11-15), Agastya saw his forefathers hanging upside down in a cave, reduced to that miserable state due to Agastya's decision to turn celibate, leaving no descendants to present them with ritual offerings. The dilemma of a renouncer who aspires to personal liberation only to find that he has harmed his forefathers is presented graphically in the account of Asita and Jaigīṣavya, also recorded in the *Mahābhārata* (9.49). Seeing that Asita, following Jaigīṣavya's advice, had renounced, his "forefathers wept aloud saying 'Who will feed us now?'"