11. There is a class of recluses who support life by gathering the fallen fruits of trees. Taking the tree for a living person, they walk under its shade and beg of it its fruits. Those fruits that fall down on such occasions are regarded as the alms granted by the tree to its mendicant guest.
12. All the possessions of a man depend upon the acts of a previous life. Wives, children and kinsmen, therefore, as agents of happiness or the reverse, depend upon one's past acts. They are effects of pre-existing causes. Then again, they may be causes of effects to be manifested in the next life, for their acts also are supposed to affect the next life of him to whom they belong.
13. i.e., they for whom he acts do not take the consequences of his acts.
14. Bhagena is explained by Nilakantha as swargaisysaryena.
15. The sense is that as the Ordainer cannot be censured, therefore, that which He has ordained for the Kshatriyas cannot be deserving of censure.
16. The meaning is that they who perform sacrifice and partake of the sacrificial food after offering it unto gods and guests, acquire such religious merit that the like of it cannot be acquired by other men. Sacrifice, therefore, is the highest act in life and the most meritorious that man can do.
17. The iti after vadi is really eti, the absence of sandhi in the proper form is Arsha. Literally rendered, the line becomes,—According to the manner in which the person of firm conviction approaches the Soul, is the success that he gets here. As the Srutis declare, if one firmly regards oneself to be Siva, the success one attains here and hereafter is after the kind of that deity.
18. The brevity of such passages is the chief obstacle to their clear comprehension. Fortunately the allusions are very plain. What is meant is that those who die during the lighted fortnights of the summer solstice attain to solar regions of bliss. Those that die during the dark fortnights of the winter solstice, attain to lunar regions. These last have to return after passing their allotted periods of enjoyment and happiness. While those that are freed from attachments, whatever the time of their Death, go to Stellar regions which are equal to that of Brahma.
19. Without attaining to the companionship of the gods and Pitris, and without obtaining Brahma, they sink in the scale of being and become worms and vermin.
20. The sense is that the gods themselves have become so by action.