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MYTHOLOGY
of fate and the actions of men and other beings in the three worlds, they will not fail to perceive that the force which compels obedience to the decrees of fate is none other than the force of karma, and that the bogeno qu (lauh-i-mahfuz), the Perspicuos Book, whose decrees can never be challenged, is the cosmic memory,' the self-registering Ledger of karma, in which are recorded all things that have happened in the past and also those that are to happen in the future, or, in the language of the Qur'an, all actions of men, including 'the works which thev have sent on before them, and the traces which they shall leave behind them.' The reader has only to turn to the doctrine of karma, * as propounded in the Jaina Siddhanta, to understand the nature of the Perspicuous Book and of the process which auto. matically records and registers the actions of men and their future, hence predetermined, fruits. The whole doctrine, thus, is a highly abridged and condensed ver. sion of the theory of karma.
Cf. “ Verily, God changes not what a people has unless they change what is in themselves." (The Quran by Abul Fazal, vol. II. p. 386). Salo's translation of this verse which is as follows is also very sigoificant. “Verily, God will not change his grace which is in men, until they change the disposition in their souls by sin" (Al Koran, p. 182). The italicised words in Sale's translation are only intended to develop the sense, which is however quite clear even without them. The idea here, clearly, is that of a modifi'cation of what is in men by their own evil deeds, in other words of a modification of disposition by actions. This is certainly in agreement with truth, as demonstrated ere this.
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