16. 'A wise man who has repeated or heard the ancient story of Nakiketas told by Death, is magnified in the world of Brahman.'

17. 'And he who repeats this greatest mystery in an assembly of Brahmans, or full of devotion at the time of the Sraddha sacrifice, obtains thereby infinite rewards.'

Footnotes

^12:1 The two are explained as the higher and lower Brahman, the former being the light, the latter the shadow. Rita is explained as reward, and connected with sukrita, lit. good deeds, but frequently used in the sense of svakrita, one's own good and evil deeds. The difficulty is, how the highest Brahman can be said to drink the reward (ritapa) of former deeds, as it is above all works and above all rewards. The commentator explains it away as a metaphorical expression, as we often speak of many, when we mean one. (Cf. Mund. Up. III, 1, 1.) I have joined sukritasya with loke, loka meaning the world, i.e. the state, the environment, which we made to ourselves by our former deeds.

^12:2 These two verses may be later additions.

^12:3 The simile of the chariot has some points of similarity with the well-known passage in Plato's Phaedros, but Plato did not borrow this simile from the Brahmans, as little as Xenophon need have consulted our Upanishad (II, 2) in writing his prologue of Prodikos.

^13:1 Sankara interprets, he should keep down speech in the mind.

^13:2 Comm., excellent teachers.