38-40. The Brahmin's possessions acquired by deception, enjoyed even in friendship, afflict the family even for seven generations,--and by forcible robbery even as long as the moon and stars exist:

A man may digest even iron filings, powdered stone, and poison; but where is the person in the three worlds who can digest a Brahmin's wealth!

Chariots and troops supported by the wealth of a Brahmin crumble away in battle like artificial river-banks of sand.

41-43. By appropriating temple property, by taking a Brahmin's possessions, and by neglecting Brahmins, families become broken up.

He is called a neglector who, instead of making a gift to one who is well-read in the Vedas and S'astras and has resorted to him, gives it to some other,

But it is no neglect if the Brahmin is without Veda-knowledge; it would be like offering to ashes instead of to the blazing fire near by.

44. Having neglected, O Tarksya, and having experienced the results in the successive hells, he is born blind and in poverty, becoming not a giver but a beggar.

45. Who takes away a plot of land, which was given by himself for another, is born for sixty thousand years as a worm in excrement.

46. The sinner who takes back by force what has been given by himself, goes into hell until the coming of the deluge.

47. Having given the means of subsistence and a piece of land, he should then protect it firmly. Who does not protect, but robs, is born as a lame dog.

48. Who gives the means of support to Brahmins obtains fruit equal to that of a lakh of cows; who robs Brahmins of their means of sup port becomes an ape, a dog and a monkey.

49. These and other signs and births, O Lord of Birds, are seen to be the karma of the embodied, made by themselves in this world.

50. Thus the makers of bad karma, having experienced the tortures mf hell, are born with the residues of their sins, in these stated forms.

51. Then, obtaining for thousands of lives the bodies of animals, they suffer from carrying burdens and other miseries.

52. Having experienced as a bird the misery of cold, rain and heat, he afterwards reaches the human state, when the good and evil are balanced.

53. Man and woman having come together, he becomes an embryo in due course. Having suffered the miseries from conception onwards to death, he again dies.

54. Birth and death are the lot of all embodied beings; thus turns the wheel in the four kingdoms of beings.

55. As the wheel of time turns, so mortals revolve by my magic. They revolve at one time of earth, at another in hell, held fast by the noose of karma.

56. He who does not mike gifts becomes poverty--stricken and through poverty he commits sin; by the force of sin he goes to hell, and is again born in poverty and again becomes sinful.