their neighbours (in the race of life), and they strive to do so to the utmost of their power; but the result turns out otherwise.  Many are the persons born under the influence of the same star and the same auspices of good luck; but a great diversity is observable in the maturity of their actions.  No person, O good Brahmana, can be the dispenser of his own lot.  The actions done in a previous existence are seen to fructify in our present life.  It is the immemorial tradition that the soul is eternal and everlasting, but the corporeal frame of all creatures is subject to destruction here (below).  When therefore life is extinguished, the body only is destroyed, but the spirit, wedded to its actions, travels elsewhere.’

“The Brahmana replied, ’O best of those versed in the doctrine of karma, and in the delivery of discourses, I long to know accurately how the soul becomes eternal.’  The fowler replied, ’The spirit dies not, there being simply a change of tenement.  They are mistaken, who foolishly say that all creatures die.  The soul betakes itself to another frame, and its change of habitation is called its death.  In the world of men, no man reaps the consequences of another man’s karma.  Whatever one does, he is sure to reap the consequences thereof; for the consequences of the karma that is once done, can never be obviated.  The virtuous become endowed with great virtues, and sinful men become the perpetrators of wicked deeds.  Men’s actions follow them; and influenced by these, they are born again.’  The Brahmana enquired, ’Why does the spirit take its birth, and why does its nativity become sinful or virtuous, and how, O good man, does it come to belong to a sinful or virtuous race?’ The fowler replied, This mystery seems to belong to the subject of procreation, but I shall briefly describe to you, O good Brahmana, how the spirit is born again with its accumulated load of karma, the righteous in a virtuous, and the wicked in a sinful nativity.  By the performance of virtuous actions it attains to the state of the gods, and by a combination of good and evil, it acquires the human state; by indulgence in sensuality and similar demoralising practices it is born in the lower species of animals, and by sinful acts, it goes to the infernal regions.  Afflicted with the miseries of birth and dotage, man is fated to rot here below from the evil consequences of his own actions.  Passing through thousands of births as also the infernal regions, our spirits wander about, secured by the fetters of their own karma.  Animate beings become miserable in the next world on account of these actions done by themselves and from the reaction of those miseries, they assume lower births and then they accumulate a new series of actions, and they consequently suffer misery over again, like sickly men partaking of unwholesome food; and although they are thus afflicted, they consider themselves to be happy and at ease and consequently their fetters are not loosened and new karma arises;