A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s1.3

c9.s1.3

Who this Krishna was, and what the purport of the instruction which Ghora Āṅgirasa imparted to Kṛṣṇa might be taken to be, we have had occasion to consider in a previous chapter. At present we are concerned merely with the list of virtues that are enumerated there, and their ethical significance. We are told that the chief virtues of man are austerity, charity, straightforwardness, harmlessness, and truthfulness : these according to Ghora Āṅgirasa constitute the chief virtues of man (S. 17. b). We have already seen the analogy which the enumeration of these virtues bears to the enumeration of a similar list of virtues in the Bhagavadgītā (XVI. 1. 2). Then, in the Chhāndogya Upanishad again, a little later on, we find the mention of the five chief different sins of which man is capable. We are told there that “he who steals gold, he who drinks wine, he who pollutes the bed of his teacher, he who kills a Brahmin, all these go down to perdition ; likewise also he, who even associates with them” (S. 17. c). In this passage we are told what were regarded, by the Upanishadic seers, the five chief different kinds of sin. The thief, the drunkard, the adulterer, the Brahmocide, and the man who associates with them, are all regarded as worthy of capital punishment : this is very much like the later injunctions in Manu and Yājñavalkya (III. 5. 227), where the same crimes are described as the greatest of all sins.