and abandoning his hundred preceptors, began to follow him in particular.  Then Kapileya began to discourse unto Janaka, who had according to the ordinance bent his head unto him (as a disciple should) and who was fully competent to apprehend the sage’s instructions, upon that high religion of Emancipation which is explained in Sankhya treatises.  Setting forth in the first place the sorrows of birth, he spoke next of the sorrows of (religious) acts.  Having finished that topic he explained the sorrows of all states of life ending even with that in the high region of the Creator.[800] He also discoursed upon that Delusion for whose sake is the practice of religion, and acts, and their fruits, and which is highly untrustworthy, destructible, unsteady, and uncertain.[801] Sceptics say that when death (of the body) is seen and is a matter of direct evidence witnessed by all, they who maintain, in consequence of their faith in the scriptures, that something distinct from the body, called the Soul, exists are necessarily vanquished in argument.  They also urge that one’s death means the extinction of one’s Soul, and that sorrow, decrepitude, and disease imply (partial) death of the Soul.  He that maintains, owing to error, that the Soul is distinct from the body and exists after the loss of body, cherishes an opinion that is unreasonable.[802] If that be regarded as existent which does not really exist in the world, then it may be mentioned that the king, being regarded so, is really never liable to decrepitude or death.  But is he, on that account, to be really believed to be above decrepitude and death?[803] When the question is whether an object exists or does not exist, and when that whose existence is asserted presents all the indications of non-existence, what is that upon which ordinary people rely in settling the affairs of life?  Direct evidence is the root of both inference and the scriptures.  The scriptures are capable of being contradicted by direct evidence.  As to inference, its evidentiary effect is not much.  Whatever be the topic, cease to reason on inference alone.  There is nothing else called jiva than this body.  In a banian seed is contained the capacity to produce leaves and flowers and fruits and roots and bark.  From the grass and water that is taken by a cow are produced milk and butter, substances whose nature is different from that of the producing causes.  Substances of different kinds when allowed to decompose in water for some time produce spirituous liquors whose nature is quite different from that of those substances that produce them.  After the same manner, from the vital seed is produced the body and its attributes, with the understanding, consciousness, mind, and other possessions.  Two pieces of wood, rubbed together, produce fire.  The stone called Suryakanta, coming in contact with the rays of the Sun, produces fire.  Any solid metallic substance, heated in fire, dries up water when coming in contact with it.  Similarly, the material body produces