24
–
மறைமலையம் - 31
marrying and settling them in life so that they might lead their life independently of their parents' help and that with this fulfilment of duty their responsibility ceases. It is also plainly enjoined that no property except a valuable education should be bestowed by parents on their children, for all earthly possession are transitory while the light of learning constitutes an everlasting possession.
In this view the ancients stood so steadfast that after setting apart a portion of their earnings for the maintenance of their family and the upbringing of their children, they employed a larger part of them for charitable purposes. It is mentioned in the old Tamil lexicons that rich persons lavished their wealth in doing thirty-two kinds of charitable deeds; and it is to their boundless generosity that we now owe the existence of not only thousands of temples all over the south, of which many for the construction of their magnificent and artistic structure must have absorbed millions of pounds, but also innumerable rest-houses, feeding houses, hospitals, schools, religious institutions and others. With this the main subjects pertaining to the present life have closed and those pertaining to a life beyond are treated from the next section with a fulness their importance and inaccessibility to ordinary understanding demand.
Now, the seventeenth section opens the subject of future life, with the question why an instinctive longing for a continued existence of their souls after the dissolution of the mortal body is so strongly implanted in the hearts of all human beings whether cultured or uncultured. This and the following sections to the end of the twenty-first treat exhaustively what could be the genuine and well-grounded answer to it. Now the longing for a future life can find itself explained only in the imperfection every man feels every time that he faces a new problem that defies his powers of understanding, in the dissatisfaction he feels every moment after the excitement of a pleasurable feeling is over, accompanied by a sharp painful experience. It is such finite experiences mixed up with ignorance and pain all throughout this mortal life, that impel man to seek for a future life in which he hopes to attain perfection of understanding and perfection of joy.
