Chapter 32 — Behavior of a Widow; Dead Husband Made Alive

Literal. The widow's-conduct code is given. The wife elects to commit sati. The sannyasi gives her four rudraksha beads, instructs her to tie two in her dead husband's ears and two around her own neck, and to sprinkle rudrabhishek tirth on his body before sati. The pyre is built. She walks around it three times. Reciting Shri Guru's name, she is led by the sannyasi to Shri Guru himself, who says: bring the body. The body is brought; Shri Guru sprinkles the rudrabhishek tirth on the dead body and looks at it with his sight full of nectar. The husband sits up, alive. He is shy at being unclothed; he wears his dhoti. A cynic asks: how can he be alive? Shri Guru says: I requested Brahmadev to give 30 years' life from his next life to this Brahmin youth.

Symbolic. The resource-transfer-across-lifetimes at the chapter's end is one of the most explicit operations in the book. Life-span is presented as a fungible quantity that can be requisitioned from a future incarnation and applied to a present one.

Structural. 30 years of life from the next life. 4 rudraksha beads. 3 rounds of the pyre.