^131:3 The fifth khanda is chiefly meant to recommend brahmakarya or abstinence from all worldly enjoyments, enjoined on the brahmakarin, the student, as a means of obtaining a knowledge of Brahman. But instead of showing that such abstinence is indispensable for a proper concentration of our intellectual faculties, we are told that abstinence is the same as certain sacrifices; and this is shown, not by arguments, but by a number of very far-fetched plays on words. These it is impossible to render in any translation, nay, they hardly deserve being translated. Thus abstinence is said to be identical with sacrifice, yagna, because yo gnata, 'he who knows,' has a certain similarity with yagna. Ishta, another kind of sacrifice, is compared with eshana, search; sattrayana with Sat, the True, the Brahman, and trayana, protection; mauna, silence, with manana, meditating (which may be right); anasakayana, fasting, with nas, to perish, and aranyagana, a hermit's life, with ara, nya, and ayana, going to the two lakes Ara and Nya, which are believed to exist in the legendary world of Brahman. Nothing can be more absurd. Having once struck the note of Brahmanic legends, such as we find it, for instance, in the Kaushitaki-brahmana-upanishad, the author goes on. Besides the lakes Ara and Nya (in the Kaushitaki-brahmana-upanishad we have only one lake, called Ara), he mentions the Airammadiya lake, and explains it as aira (ira annam, tanmaya airo mandas, tena purnam airam) and madiya, delightful. The Asvattha tree, which pours down Soma, is not tortured into anything else, except that Soma is explained as the immortal, or nectar. Aparagita becomes the city of Brahman, because it can be conquered by no one except those who have practised abstinence. And the hall which elsewhere is called Vibhu-pramita becomes Prabhu-vimitam, or Prabhu-vinirmita, made by Prabhu, i.e. Brahman. All the fulfilled desires, as enumerated in khandas 2-5, whether the finding again of our fathers and mothers, or entering the Brahmaloka with its lakes and palaces, must be taken, not as material (sthula), but as mental only (manasa). On that account, however, they are by no means considered as false or unreal, as little as dreams are. Dreams are false and unreal, relatively only, i. e. relatively to what we see, when we awake; but not in themselves. Whatever we see in waking, also, has been shown to be false; because it consists of forms and names only; yet these forms and names have a true element in them, viz. the Sat. Before we know that Sat, all the objects we see in waking seem true; as dreams seem true in dreaming. But when once we awake from our waking by true knowledge, we see that nothing is true but the Sat. When we imagine we see a serpent, and then discover that it is a rope, the serpent disappears as false, but what was true in it, the rope, remains true.