Punya (puṇya)

Punya is merit, the positive store built by giving, truthfulness, pilgrimage and right conduct, which ripens into good fortune here or a better birth hereafter. Its opposite is papa, demerit. The Mahabharata takes the accounting seriously enough to make it a plot mechanism, as when merit is transferred, spent or gambled, and cynical enough to keep asking whether a heaven bought with merit is worth having, which is exactly Yudhishthira's objection in the final book.