1343.  The two negatives in the first line are equivalent to an affirmative.  Prasangatah is explained by the commentator in a slightly different way.  Affluence, in consequence of the attachment it generates, stands in the way of Emancipation.  Hence, i.e., in consequence of this consideration, the king’s opinion regarding affluence, is correct.  With respect to the certainty of attaining to Emancipation, compare Gita, Vahunam janmanamante jnanavan mam prapadyate, etc.

1344.  The object of this verse, as explained by the commentator, is to exhort Yudhishthira to strive after Emancipation without being at all moved by his happiness or misery which (as stated here) come to Jiva as accidents.

1345.  The wind has space for its progenitor.  Jiva has the stainless and immutable Chit for his progenitor.  Like the wind, which is hueless, catching hues from surrounding objects and making its own hueless progenitor look as if it has hues, Jiva also, though in reality stainless, catches stains from Ignorance and Acts and makes his own progenitor, the stainless and immutable Chit, display stains of every kind.  This is how the commentator puts the simile, supplying the points that have been omitted in the text.

1346.  These aphorisms are very abstruse.  What is meant by saying that the attainment of Brahma does not depend upon Acts is this:  Acts are terminable.  Their consequences also are terminable.  Acts, therefore, can never be the means by which Brahma can be attained, for Brahma is interminable and eternal, not like the felicity of heaven which is changeful.  The only means by which Jiva may revert to Brahma is by dispelling Ignorance through Knowledge; or, as the Upanishads declare, one attains to it as one gets one’s forgotten necklace of gold, which all the while is on the neck though sought for with assiduity everywhere.  K.P.  Singha misunderstands it completely.  What is meant by the direction about reverencing persons who have attained to Brahma is this:  the existence of Brahma and the possibility of Jiva’s reverting to that Immutable status are matters that depend upon the conception of such men.  Brahma, again, is so difficult to keep, that the great sages never desist for a moment from the culture that is necessary for its retention.

1347.  Intermediate i.e., as animals and birds and reptiles and worms, etc.

1348. i.e., if righteous, one attains to happiness; if otherwise, to the reverse.

1349.  Verse 21 and the first line of 22 are grammatically connected.

1350.  Me in the second line is equivalent to Maya.  Tatah is tatra yuddhakale.  Hari had come to aid Indra, and hence Vritra had beheld him.  He is called Hari because he takes away one’s sins.  Besides the well-known derivation of the word Narayana, the commentator here offers another, viz., the ayanam or layasthanam of Nara or Jivasangha.