The law-maker has to contend with them that would reject the necessity of following in order the traditional stadia of a priest's life; that imagine that by becoming ascetics without first having passed through the preliminary stadia they can by knowledge alone attain the bliss that is obtained by union with _brahma_ (or Brahm[=a]).

In other words the jurist has to contend with a trait eminently anti-Brahmanistic, even Buddhistic.
He denies this value of knowledge, and therewith shows that what he wishes to have inculcated is a belief in the temporary personal existence of the Manes; in heaven till the end of the world-order; and the annihilation of the wicked; while he has a confused or mixed opinion in regard to one's own personal immortality, believing on the one hand that there is a future existence in heaven with the gods, and on the other (rather a materialistic view) that immortality is nothing but continued existence in the person of one's descendants, who are virtually one's self in another body: _dehatvam ev[=a]'nyat,_ "only the body is different" (_ib_) 2.

As to cosmogony it is stated to be (not the emanation of an _[=a]tm[=a]_) but the "emission (creation) of the Father-god and of the seers" (the latter being visible as stars, _ib_.

13, 14).

In this there is plainly a received popular opinion, which reflects the Vedic and Brahmanic stage, and is opposed to the philosophical views of the Upanishads, in other words of the first Vedantic philosophy; while it is mixed up with the late doctrine of the cataclysms, which ruin each succeeding^ creation.