II / (i)

Sanchit – The stored deeds

Good or bad deeds that stand to man’s credit as earned in all the previous existences in the order of creation, counting from the day of the first appearance of life on earth. Man knows nothing about them, or of their extent and their great potential power. King Dharitrashtra, the blind progenitor of the Kshatriya princes, the Kurvas of the Epic Age, when endowed by Lord Krishna with his yogic power, was able to trace the cause of his blindness to an act done in the unknown past, extending back to over 100 incarnations or embodiments.

In Chapter 20:5 of the Book of Exodus, Moses, while giving the Ten Commandments of God, speaks of God as having commanded:

I the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation […]

Even the medical science today affirms the significant part that heredity plays and traces the origin of certain diseases coming down from progenitors and appearing in succeeding generations. So does modern psychology connect problematic behaviours in certain individuals with mental peculiarities in their parents and ancestors.