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ANUGITA
CHAPTER III
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There is no destruction here of actions good or not good 1. Coming to one body after another they become ripened in their respective ways 2. As a fruitful (tree) producing fruit may yield much fruit, so does merit performed with a pure mind become expanded 3. Sin, too, performed with a sinful mind, is similarly (expanded). For the self engages in action, putting forward this mind 4. And now further, hear how 5 a man, overwhelmed with action, and enveloped in desire and anger 6, enters a womb. Within the womb of a woman, (he) obtains-as the result of action a body good or else bad 7, made up of virile semen and blood. Owing to (his) subtlety and imperceptibility, though he obtains a body appertaining to the Brahman, he is not attached anywhere; hence is he the eternal Brahman 8. That is the seed of all beings; by that all creatures exist. That soul, entering all the limbs of the fœtus, part by part, and dwelling in the seat of the life-wind 9, supports (them) with the mind 10.
Footnotes :
1. Cf. Maitri-upanishad, and Mundaka. And see generally as to this passage, Sariraka Bhashya.
2. I. e. they yield their respective fruits; cf. Maitri and Khandogya.
3. This explains, say the commentators, how even a little merit or sin requires sometimes more than one birth to enjoy and exhaust,
4. As a king performs sacrifices 'putting forward' a priest, Arguna Misra; and cf. Dhammapada, the first two verses.
5. Arguna Misra has tatha, 'in the same way,' instead of this, and renders it to mean 'putting forward' the mind.
6. Hence he does not get rid of birth and death.
7. Good = of gods or men; bad = of the lower species of creatures, Arguna.
8. He, in the preceding sentences, according to Arguna Misra, means the self, through the mind, or 'putting forward' the mind, as said above. In this sentence, he takes 'he' to mean the mind itself; Brahman = the self; and the mind, he says, is called the Brahman, as it, like the self, is the cause of the Kaitanya, intelligence, in all creatures.
9. I. e. the heart.
10. Arguna Misra says that the. soul at the beginning of the sentence means the mind, and mind here means knowledge or intelligence. Cf. supra.
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