Chapter 9 describes the earliest extant Indian beliefs about the afterlife, which were superseded by the idea of individually accumulated metaphysical merit accompanied by the danger of repeated death, which develops into the idea of subjection in the hereafter to a repeated cosmic cycle. All this prefigures the combination of individually accumulated karma with the universal cycle of reincarnation (sam?sara), from which escape was sought by various forms of renunciation. An important factor in these developments was the individual accumulation and universal circulation of money.