Lively Sins

A well-known hymnal tag in Sanskrit, the concluding passage of a longer incantation, which elderly males in the house I grew up in used to recite as they emerged from the bathing shed after sploshing mugs of water over their bodies every morning, viewed human beings as fundamentally sinful. Following this, every human being on this earth was conceived in sin, a product of a sinful act by the progenitors (papoham papakarmanam papatma papasambhavaha), a formulation that I found even as a young boy, who had no experience or even much knowledge of sex, both problematic and detestable. While offences like adultery and murder, addiction to wine and gambling, usury and so on, are crimes, the manifestation of human failings attracts varying degrees of punishment.