643.  This is not Emancipation, but merely terminable felicity.

644.  Attains to Emancipation or Absorption in-to the essence of Brahma.

645.  These are Direct knowledge (through the senses), Revelation, Inference, and Intuition.

646.  The first six are Hunger, Thirst, Grief, Delusion, Disease, and Death.  The other sixteen are the five breaths, the ten senses, and the mind.

647.  I think, K.P.  Singha misunderstands this verse.  Three different ends are spoken of.  One is absorption into Brahma; the other’s enjoyment of ordinary felicity, which, of course, is terminable, and the last is the enjoyment of that felicity which is due to a freedom from desire and attachments; 126 speaks of this last kind of felicity.

648.  In the second line saraddham is not an indeclinable; or, if it be taken as such, the sense may still remain unaltered.  What the monarch does is to call upon the Brahmana to share with the monarch the rewards that the monarch had won.

649.  The sense seems to be that yogins attain to Brahma even here; whereas Reciters attain to him after death.

650.  The fact is, I do not know anything of Him, but still I profess to worship him.  This is false behaviour.  How shall I be rescued from such falsehood?  This is what Vrihaspati says.

651.  The Chhandas are the rules of Prosody as applicable to the Vedic hymns.  Jyotish is astronomy.  It forms an Anga of the Vedas.  Nirukta furnishes rules for interpreting obscure passages of the Vedas, and also gives the meanings of technical or obscure words used therein.  Kalpa is the description of religious rites.  Siksha is the science of Pronunciation as applied to Vedic hymns and mantras.

652.  They who believe that happiness is not eternal and that, therefore, they should not Pursue it, withdraw themselves from pious acts which lead to that happiness.  They seek Knowledge as the best means for avoiding all that is transitory and changeful.  They seek moksha or complete Emancipation which has been described in the previous sections.

653.  The meaning of ‘hell’ as applied in such passages has been explained before.

654.  This is a highly aphoristic line.  I give the sense by expanding the words.  By ‘acts’ here is meant ’sacrifices and other religious observances.’  The intention of Vrihaspati is to enforce the Propriety of acts, for without acts, the ends of life cannot, he maintains, be secured.

655.  The sense is that one should devote oneself to acts as a sort of preparation.  Afterwards one should abandon them for obtaining the higher end.  Acts, therefore, have their use, and help one, though mediately, in the acquisition of Brahma.

656.  The mind and acts have created all things.  This has been explained in the last verse of section 190 ante.  Both are good paths, for by both, good end maybe attained, viz., the highest, by drilling the mind, as also (mediately) by acts (as explained in verse 14 above).  The fruits of actions must be mentally abandoned if the highest end is to be attained; i.e., acts may be gone through, but their fruits should never be coveted.