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.
The path of the fathers, and return
But those who win worlds by sacrifice, by gift, and by austerity pass into the smoke; from the smoke, into the night; from the night, into the dark fortnight; from the dark fortnight, into the six months during which the sun moves southward; from the months, into the world of the fathers; from the world of the fathers, into the moon. Reaching the moon they become food. There the gods consume them, as they consume King Soma, saying, Wax, wane. When that is spent for them, they pass into this very space; from space, into air; from air, into rain; from rain, into the earth. Reaching the earth they become food. Again they are offered in the fire of man, and thence are born in the fire of woman. Rising again to the worlds, they revolve in the same round. But those who do not know these two paths become insects and moths and biting serpents.
The second destiny is the path of the fathers (pitryana): those who gain worlds through ritual sacrifice, charity, and austerity (but lack the knowledge) go after death to the deity of smoke, then the night, the dark (waning) fortnight, the six months of the sun's southward course, the world of the fathers, and the moon. There they become food, and the gods feed on them as they feed on Soma, bidding them wax and wane. When that store of merit is exhausted, they fall back through space, then air, then rain, then earth, where they become food again; they are offered into the fire of man, then born from the fire of woman, and so rise once more to the worlds and turn in the same cycle of rebirth. And those who know neither of these two paths are born as the small creatures, insects, moths, and biting serpents, dying and returning without rest.
pitṛyāna
the path of the fathers. The southern path of smoke, by the dark fortnight and the moon, by which the doer of rites attains temporary worlds and then falls back into birth.
In the commentaries
Against the road that does not return Sankara sets the road that does, and below both a fate that is neither. Those who win the worlds by sacrifice, gift, and austerity, the rite done in the village without the saving knowledge, pass into the smoke, the night, the dark fortnight, the six months of the sun's southern course, the world of the fathers, and the moon; there, Sankara says with unsparing plainness, they become the food of the gods, spent like an oblation, until the merit is used up. Then they fall again, back through ether, air, rain, and earth, become food, are offered in the fire of man and the fire of woman, and are born once more, only to act and die and rise and fall again: this is the path of the fathers (pitryana). And there is a third place for those who know neither road and do not even sacrifice well; they become the small creatures that are born and die without rest, the gnats and the biting things, turning in a wheel that belongs to no honoured path at all.