The wise man goes to them (becomes a god) only to return to earth again.

All systems thus unite hell and heaven with the _karma_ doctrine.

But in this Jain work, as in so many of the orthodox writings, the weight is laid more on hell as a punishment than on rebirth.

Probably the first Jains did not acknowledge gods at all, for it is an early rule with them not to say 'God rains,' or use any such expression, but to say 'the cloud rains'; and in other ways they avoid to employ a terminology which admits even implicitly the existence of divinities.

Yet do they use a god not infrequently as an agent of glorification of Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, saying in later writings that Indra transformed himself, to do the Teacher honor; and often they speak of the gods and goddesses as if these were regarded as spirits.