Adhyaya 209

This chapter heading serves as a transitional rubric, marking a doctrinal turn toward dāna-śāstra style instruction. It notes recensional variants in the subtitle (readings that stress “good fortune,” paired either with “a good pair of benefits” or with “right understanding”). In the Agni Purana’s encyclopedic method, such headings often signal a shift from thematic praise to procedural definition. Here it prepares the reader for the next chapter’s formal taxonomy of charity—iṣṭa and pūrta—by placing the discussion in a disciplined interpretive frame: dāna is not an indiscriminate accumulation of acts, but rule-governed dharma whose fruit depends on the proper conjunction of place, time, recipient, and intention. Thus the chapter functions as an “index node” in the Dana-mahatmya layer, aligning devotional motive (śraddhā) with shastric precision.