Khila Kanda. Adhyaya 6, Brahmana 2. The five fires, and the two paths after death
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
Fifth fire, the woman
Woman, O Gautama, is the fire. Her lap is its fuel; the hairs, its smoke; the womb, its flame; what is done within, its embers; the pleasures, its sparks. In this fire the gods offer the seed. Out of that oblation a man arises. He lives as long as he is to live. Then, when he dies,
The fifth fire: the woman is a fire, with her lap as fuel, the body-hairs as smoke, the womb as flame, the act done within as embers, the delights as sparks. In this fire the gods offer the seed (carried from the fourth fire), and from that offering a person (a new human being) comes to be. He lives out his appointed span; and then, when he dies,
In the commentaries
With the fifth fire the circle of descent closes, and Sankara marks it as the answer to the king's strangest question, after how many oblations the waters come to wear a human voice. Woman is the fire; in her the gods offer the seed, and from that offering a person comes to be. The faith poured into heaven became the moon, the moon became rain, rain became food, food became seed, and the seed offered in this last fire becomes the embryo, the self now clothed for another birth. Sankara keeps the whole as a chain of oblations so that birth is read as the far end of sacrifice, the same liquid essence travelling down through five altars until it stands up as a living man. The point of the count is sobering: this is how those who only acted, and did not know, are folded back into the world.