A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t2.60

c6.s3.t2.60

tion. “According as a man’s works are, so does he become.” It is this moral backbone of the Upanishadic eschatology that gives it a great philosophical value. In the passage of the Chhāndogya Upanishad just next to the one we have discussed, we are told that those who have been of a “beautiful” character quickly attain to a covetable birth, that of a Brāhmaṇa or Kshatriya or Vaiśya, and those who have been of an “ugly” character speedily attain to a miserable birth, as that of a dog or swine or pariah (S. 24. c), which statement is made still more definite in the Kaushītaki Upanishad where the law of *karman* is explicitly mentioned, and a soul is said to take on the body of “a worm or a moth, a fish or a bird, a leopard or a lion, a serpent or a man, or any of these other creatures, according to his *karman* and knowledge” (S. 24. d.)