Yoga Vasistha (Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana)

RÁMA’S RETURN FROM PILGRIMAGE. Ráma strewn over with handfuls of flowers by the citizens (surrounding him) entered the palace, as when the beauteous Jayanta (son of Indra) enters his celestial abode. 2. On his first arrival he bent himself in reverence before his father, before Vasishtha, before his brothers, his friends, the Bráhmanas and the elderly members of the family. 3. Repeatedly embraced as he was by friends, by his father, mothers and by the Bráhmanas, the son of Raghu bowed down his head to them with joy. 4. The assembled people after their familiar conversation with Ráma in the palace, strolled about on all sides highly delighted with his speech, resembling the music of a flute. 5. Thus eight days were passed in festive mirth consequent to the arrival of Ráma, and shouts of joy were sent forth by the elated multitude. 6. Thenceforth Rághava continued to dwell happily at home, with relating to his friends, the different customs and manners of the countries (he visited) on all sides. 7. He rose early in the morning and performed his morning service according to law. He then visited his father seated as Indra in his Council.

8. He next passed a fourth part of the day in company with Vasishtha and other sages, and was greatly edified by their conversations which were full of instruction. 9. He used also to go out for sport under orders of his father; and surrounded by a large number of troops, to forests full of (wild) boars and buffaloes. 10. Then after returning home and performing his bath and other rites with his friends, he took his meal with them, and passed the night in company with his beloved companions. 11. In these and similar practices did he pass his days with his brothers at his father’s house, after his return from the pilgrimage. 12. Oh sinless (Bharadwája), with his conduct becoming a prince, Ráma passed his days with giving delight to the good men that surrounded him, in the manner of the moon that gladdens mankind with his soothing ambrosial beams.

OF RÁMA’S SELF-DEJECTION AND ITS CAUSE. Válmíki said:— Afterwards Ráma attained the fifteenth year of his age, and so also Satrughna and Lakshmana who followed Ráma (in birth), attained also the same age. 2. Bhárata continued to dwell with joy at the house of his maternal grandfather, and the king (Dasaratha) ruled the whole earth as usual. 3. The most wise king Dasaratha (now) consulted his ministers day after day about the marriage of his sons. 4. But as Ráma remained at home since his return from pilgrimage, he began to decay day by day as the translucent lake in autumn. 5. His blooming face with its out-stretched eyes, assumed by degrees a paleness like that of the withering petals of the white lotus beset by a swarm of bees. 6. He sat silent and motionless in the posture of his folded legs (Padmásana), and remained absorbed in thought with his palm placed under his cheek and neck. 7. Being emaciated in person, and growing thoughtful, sad and distracted in his mind, he remained speechless as a mute picture in painting. 8. On being repeatedly requested by the anxious inmates of the family to perform his daily rites, he discharged them with a melancholy countenance (literally—with his faded lotus-like face).

9. Seeing the accomplished Ráma—the mine of merits in such a plight, all his brothers likewise were reduced to the same condition with him. 10. The king of the earth observing all his three sons thus dejected and lean, gave way to anxiety together with all his queens. 11. Dasaratha asked Ráma repeatedly and in a gentle voice (to tell him) what his anxiety was, and what was the cause of his thoughtfulness; but he returned no answer to it. 12. Then being taken up in his father’s lap, the lotus-eyed Ráma replied, that he had no anxiety whatever, and held his silence. 13. Afterwards the king Dasaratha asked Vasishtha, the best of speakers and well informed in all matters, as to the cause why Ráma was so sorrowful. 14. The sage Vasishtha thought over the matter (for a while), and then said, “There is Oh king! a cause of Ráma’s sadness, but you need not be anxious about it. 15. “Wise men, Oh king! never entertain the fluctuations of anger or grief, or a lengthened delight from frivolous causes, just as the great elements of the world do not change their states (of inertness) unless it were for the sake of (some new) production.”

ADVENT OF VISWÁMITRA TO THE ROYAL COURT. The king was thrown into sorrow and suspense at these words of the prince of sages (Vasishtha); but kept his silence for sometime, and waited (that time might work a change). 2. (Meanwhile) the queens of the palace, kept themselves watchful of the movements of Ráma with anxious carefulness. 3. At this very time the famous Viswámitra, the great sage came to visit the king of men at Ayodhyá. 4. The intelligent and wise seer had his sacrificial rites disturbed by the Rákshasas, who were deceitfully powerful and giddy with their strength. 5. It was for the security of his sacrifice that the sage waited on the king, because he was unable to accomplish it in peace (by himself). 6. It was also for the purpose of their destruction, that the illustrious Viswámitra, who was the gem of austere devotion had come to the city of Ayodhyá. 7. Desirous of seeing the king, he spoke to the guards at the gate, to report the arrival of Kausika the son of Gádhi to the king with despatch. 8. On hearing these words, the guards were struck with fear in their minds, and ran as they were bid to the palace of the king.

9. Coming to the Royal abode, the door-keepers informed the chief-warder of the arrival of Viswámitra the royal sage. 10. The staff-bearer immediately proceeded to the presence of the king, seated among the princes and chiefs (under him) in the Court house, and gave his report saying:— 11. “Please your majestic, there is waiting at the door a mighty personage of majestic appearance, bright as the morning sun, with his pendant locks of hair (red and ruddy) as sunbeams. 12. “The brilliancy of his person has brightened the place from the top-most flag down to the ground, and made the horses, men and armory shine as with a golden hue.” 13. No sooner had the warder appeared (before the king), and with hurried words announced the arrival of the sage Viswámitra: 14. Then the best of kings as he heard the herald say so, rose at once from his throne of gold with all the ministers and chiefs that surrounded him. 15. He walked immediately on foot with the staff of princes and chiefs by whom he was held in honour and regard, and in company with Vasishtha and Vámadeva. 16. He went to the spot where the great sage was waiting, and saw Viswámitra the chief of sages standing at the gateway.

17. His priestly prowess joined with his military valour, made him appear as the sun descended on earth on some account. 18. He was hoary with old age, rough-skinned by the practice of austerities, and covered down to his shoulders by red-bright braids of hair, resembling the evening clouds over topping a mountain brow. 19. He was mild looking and engaging in his appearance, but at the same time as brilliant as the orb of the sun. He was neither assuming nor repulsive, but possessed of an ineffable gravity and majesty in his person. 20. He was attractive yet formidable (in his look), clear yet vast (in his mind), deep and full (in knowledge), and shining (with his inward light). 21. His life time had no limit, nor his mind any bound to it, nor had age impaired his understanding. He held the ascetics pot in one hand, that went (through life) as his only faithful companion. 22. The compassionateness of his mind, added to the sweet complacency of his speech and looks, pleased the people as if they were actually served with nectar drops, or sprinkled over with ambrosial dews. 23. His body decorated by the sacred thread, and his white prominent eyebrows, made him appear as a wonder to the eyes of his beholders.

24. On seeing the sage, the lord of earth lowly bent himself at a distance, and then bowed down to him (so low), that the ground was decorated by the gems pendant upon his crown. 25. The sage also in his turn greeted the Lord of the earth on the spot with sweet and kind words, like the sun greeting the lord of the gods. 26. Afterwards the assembled Bráhmans (of the court) headed by Vasishtha, honoured him with their welcomes. 27. The king said:—We are as highly favoured, Oh holy sage! by thine unexpected appearance and thy glorious sight, as a bed of lotuses at the sight of the luminous sun. 28. Oh sage, I have felt at thine appearance the happiness which knows no bounds, and which has no diminution in it. 29. This day we must be placed at the front rank of the fortunate, as we have become the object of thine advent. 30. With these and similar conversations that went on among the princes and the sages, they proceeded to the court-hall where they took their respective seats. 31. The king finding the best of sages (Viswámitra) so very prosperous in his devotion, felt some hesitation to offer him the arghya (honorarium) himself with his cheerful countenance.

32. He (the sage) accepted the arghya offered him by the king, and hailed him during his act of turning round (the sage), according to the rules of Sástra. 33. Thus honoured by the king, he with a cheerful countenance asked the Lord of men about the good health (of himself and family), and the fulness of his finance. 34. Then coming in contact with Vasishtha, the great sage saluted him as he deserved with a smile, and asked him about his health (and of those in his hermitage). 35. After their interview and exchange of due courtesies had lasted for a while to the satisfaction of all in the royal assembly; 36. They both took their respective seats; when every one (in the court) respectfully greeted the sage of exalted prowess. 37. After the sapient sage (Viswámitra) was seated, they made various offerings of pádya, arghya and kine to him. 38. Having honoured Viswámitra in due form, the lord of men condescended to address him with a gladdest mind and in submissive terms, with his palms folded over each other.

ADDRESS OF KING DASARATHA. 39. He said, “Sir, your coming here is as grateful to me as the obtaining of nectar by one, as a rainfall after a drought, and as the gaining of sight by the blind.” 40. Again it is as delightful to me as the getting of a son by a childless man in his beloved wife, and coming in possession of a treasure in a dream. 41. Your advent is no less pleasing to me than one’s meeting with the object of his wishes, the arrival of a friend, and the recovery of thing that was given for lost. 42. It gives me the joy that is derived from the sight of a deceased friend suddenly returning by the way of the sky. It is thus Oh Bráhman, I welcome your visit to me. 43. Who is there that is not glad to live in the heaven (Brahma-loka)? I feel myself as happy Oh sage! at your advent, and this I tell you truly. 44. (Now tell me) what is your best pleasure, and what I may do for you; O Vipra, that are the best of the virtuous, and most properly deserving of my services.

45. Formerly had you been famed under the title of Rájarshi (or royal sage); but since, made glorious by dint of your asceticism, you have been promoted to the rank of a Brahmarshi (or Brahman sage). Wherefore you are truly the object of my worship. 46. I am so glad at your sight that it soothes my inmost soul, in the same manner as an ablution in Gangá’s stream cheers the mind. 47. Free as you are from fears and desires, from wrath and passions and the feelings of pleasure, pain and disease, it is very wonderful, Oh Bráhman, that you should have recourse to me (for anything). 48. I consider myself as situated at a holy sanctuary, and absolved from all my sins, or as merged in the lunar sphere (by your presence), Oh! best of the learned in the truths of the Vedas. 49. I understand your appearance as that of Brahmá himself before me, and I confess myself, O sage! to be purified and favoured by your advent. 50. I am indeed so gratified at your arrival, that I deem myself fortunate in this birth, and that I have not lived in vain but led a truly good life.

51. My heart cannot contain within itself, but overflows (with joy) like the sea at the sight of the moon, since I beheld your person here and made my respectful obeisance to you. 52. Whatever is your commission, and whatsoever may be the object, O greatest of sages! which has brought you hither, know it as already granted (by me); for your commands are always to be obeyed by me. 53. You need not hesitate to communicate to me your hest, O progeny of Kausika, there is nothing, with me which is to be kept from you, if you should ask for it. 54. You need not dubitate about my performance of the act. I tell it solemnly that I will execute your behest to the last item, as I take you in the light of a superior divinity. 55. Upon hearing these sweet words (of the king), which were pleasing to the ears, and delivered with a humility worthy of one knowing himself, the far famed and meritorious chief of the sages felt highly gratified in himself.

VISWÁMITRA’S REQUEST FOR RÁMA. After the illustrious Viswámitra had heard the aforesaid unusually lengthy speech of the lion among kings, his hairs stood erect with joy, and he said (in reply). 2. This speech is worthy of thee, O best of kings on earth, and one descended from a royal race, and guided by the sage Vasishtha himself. 3. Consider well O king about the performance of the act which I have in mind, and support (the cause of) virtue. 4. I am employed, O chief of men, in religious acts for attainment of my consummation, whereto the horrible Rákshasas have become my great obstructions. 5. Whenever I betake myself to offer sacrifices (to the gods) at any place, instantly do these nocturnal demons appear to destroy my sacrificial rites. 6. The chiefs of the Rákshasas fling heaps of flesh and blood on the sacrificial ground (before me), on very many occasions that I commence my ceremonies. 7. Being thus obstructed in my sacrificial duties, I now come to thee from that spot and with a broken spirit, after having laboured in vain (for completion of the rites). 8. I have no mind O king, to give vent to my anger by imprecations, which have no room in my conduct (of religious life).

9. Such being the sacrificial law, I expect to gain its great object in peace by thy favor. 10. Being thus oppressed I have recourse to thy protection, and thou shouldst protect me (from wrongs); otherwise it is an insult to solicitors to be put to disappointment by the best of men (as thyself). 11. Thou hast a son, the beauteous Ráma, powerful as the fierce tiger, and strong as the great Indra himself. He it is who is able to destroy the Rákshasas. 12. Now mayst thou deliver to me that Ráma thy eldest son, having his youthful locks of hair like the sable plumage of a crow, but possessing the true valour of a hero. 13. Protected under my sacred authority, he will be able by his personal prowess, to sever the heads of the malicious Rákshasas. 14. I will do him an infinity of good services, whereby he will in the end become adored by the inhabitants of the three worlds. 15. The night-wandering Rákshasas cannot abide in the field before Ráma, but must fly like stags in the wilderness before the furious lion. 16. No other man than Ráma can make bold to fight with the Rákshasas; as no animal other than the furious lion can stand to fight with the wild elephants.

17. Elated with their strength these vicious beings have become (as deadly) as poisoned shafts in fighting, and being delegates of Khara and Dushana, they are as furious as death itself. 18. They cannot, Oh thou tiger among kings! be able to sustain the arrows of Ráma, but must set down like the flying dust under the ceaseless showers of his arrows. 19. Let not paternal affection prevail over thee O king (to withhold thy son), as there is nothing in this world, which the high-minded will refuse to part with (to their suitor). 20. I know it for certain, and so shouldst thou know also, that the Rákshasas must be destroyed by him; and (believe me) that wise men like ourselves will never undertake to engage in an uncertainty. 21. I well know the great soul of the lotus-eyed Ráma, and so does the illustrious Vasishtha, and all other far-seeing (sages and seers). 22. Should the sense of greatness, duty and renown, have a seat in thy soul, thou shouldst deliver my desired object—thy son to me. 23. It will take me ten nights to perform the rites of my sacrifice, at which Ráma shall have to stay with me and kill the Rákshasas, who are obnoxious to my rites and enemies of the sacrifice.

24. Let the ministers, Oh Kákutstha! headed by Vasishtha join to give their assent (to it), and deliver thy Ráma to me. 25. Thou O son of Raghu, that knowest the times (of religious observances) must not allow my time to slip, so do as I may have Ráma. Be blest and give not way to sorrow. 26. Even the smallest service appears to be much if done in good time, and the best service is of no avail if done out of season. 27. The illustrious and holy chief of the sages Viswámitra, paused after saying these words fraught with a virtuous and useful intention. 28. Hearing these words of the great sage, the magnanimous king held his silence for some time, with a view to prepare a fitting answer; because no man of sense is ever satisfied with talking unreasonably either before others or to himself.

DASARATHA’S REPLY TO VISWÁMITRA. Válmíki added:—On hearing these words of Viswámitra, the tiger among kings remained speechless for a moment, and then besought him in the lowliness of his spirit. 2. Ráma my lotus-eyed boy is only of fifteen years of age. I do not see he is a match for the Rákshasas. 3. Here is a full akshauhiní legion of my soldiers; of whom, Oh my Lord! I am the sole commander; surrounded by them I will offer battle to the Rákshasas cannibals. 4. Here are my brave generals who are well disciplined in warfare; I will be their leader in the height of war with my bow in hand. 5. Accompanied with these, I can offer fight to the enemies of the gods, and to the great Indra himself, in the same manner as the lion withstands the wild elephants. 6. Ráma is but a boy who has no knowledge of the strength of our forces, and whose experience has scarcely stretched to the battle field beyond the inner apartments (of the house). 7. He is not well trained in arms, nor is he skilled in warfare. He does not know to fight with a foe, arrayed in the order of battle.

8. He only knows how to walk about in the gardens of this city and amidst the arbours and pleasant groves. 9. He only knows how to play with his brother princes, in the flowery parks set apart for his play within the precincts of the palace. 10. Nowadays, Oh Bráhman! he has become by a sad reverse of my fortune, as lean and pale as the withering lotus under the dews. 11. He has no taste for his food, nor can he walk from one room to another, but remains ever silent and slow brooding over his inward grief and melancholy. 12. In my great anxiety about him, O chief of sages, I have been, with my family and dependants, deprived of the gist of our bodies, and become as empty clouds of autumn. 13. Can my boy, so young as he is, and thus subjected to distemper, be fit to fight at all, and again with those marauders who rove about at nights. 14. Oh thou high-minded sage! it is one’s affection for his son that affords him far greater pleasure than his possession of a kingdom, or his connection with beauteous females, or even his relish for the juice of nectar.

15. It is from paternal affection that good people (engage to) perform the hardest duties and austerities of religion, and any thing which is painfull in the three worlds. 16. Men are even prepared under certain circumstances to sacrifice their own lives, riches and wives; but they can never sacrifice their children: this is the nature with all living beings. 17. The Rákshasas are very cruel in their actions and fight deceitful warfares: so that Ráma should fight them, is an idea which is very painful to me. 18. I that have a desire to live, cannot dare to live for a moment in separation from Ráma; therefore thou shouldst not take him away (from me). 19. I have O Kausika! passed nine thousand rains in my lifetime, ere these four boys were born to me after much austerity. 20. The lotus-eyed Ráma is the eldest of these without whom the three others can hardly bear to live. 21. This Ráma is going to be conveyed by thee against the Rákshasas; but when I am deprived of that son, know me certainly for dead. 22. Of my four sons he is the one in whom rests my greatest love. Therefore do not take away Ráma—my eldest and most virtuous son from me.

23. If thy intention Oh sage, is to destroy the force of night wanderers, take me there accompanied by the four kinds (elephants, horse, chariots and foot soldiers) of mine army. 24. Describe to me clearly what these Rákshasas are, how strong they are, whose sons they be and what their size and figure. 25. Tell me the way in which the Rákshasas are to be destroyed by Ráma or my boys or by myself, when they are known to be treacherous in warfare. 26. Tell me all these, Oh great sage! that I can calculate the possibility of our making a stand against the fiercely disposed Rákshasas in the open field, when they are certainly so very powerful. 27. The Rákshasa named Rávana is heard as being very powerful, he is brother of Kubera himself, and is the son of the sage Visravas. 28. If it is he, the evil minded Rávana, that stands in the way of thy rites, we are unable to contend with that pest. 29. Power and prosperity in all their flourish come within the reach of the living at times, but they disappear at others. 30. Nowadays we are no match for such foes as Rávana and some others. Such is the decree of destiny.

31. Therefore, O thou, that art acquainted with law, do this favour to my son (as not to take him away); unlucky as I am, it is thou that art the arbiter of my fate. 32. The gods, and Asuras, the Gandharvas and Yakshas, the huge beasts, birds and serpents are unable to fight with Rávana: what are we human beings in arms to him. 33. That Rákshasa holds the prowess of the most powerful, we cannot afford to fight with him, nor even with his children. 34. This is a peculiar age in which good people are made powerless; I am moreover disabled by old age and want that spirit (that I was expected to possess) derived as I am from (the most powerful) race of the Raghus. 35. Tell me O Bráhmana! if it is Lavan the son of Madhu (the notorious Asúra) that disturbs the sacrificial rites; in that case also I will not part with my son. 36. If it be the two sons of Sunda and Upasunda terrible as they are like the sons of the sun, that disturb your sacrifice, in that case also I will not give my son to thee.

37. But after all, O Bráhman, shouldest thou snatch him from me (by dint of the supernatural power that thou possessest), then I am also dead and gone with him. I do not see any other chance of a lasting success of thy devotion (except by my death). 38. Saying these gentle words, the descendant of Raghu was drowned in the sea of suspense with regard to the demand of the sage, but being unable to arrive at a conclusion, the great king was carried away by the current of his thoughts as one by the high waves of the sea.

VISWÁMITRA’S WRATH. AND HIS ENRAGED SPEECH. Válmíki said:—On hearing this speech of the king with his piteous look and eyes full of tears, the son of Kausika became highly incensed and replied. 2. Thou art about to break thy promise after pledging thyself to its performance, and thus wishest to behave as a deer after having been a lion (before). 3. This is unbecoming of the race of Raghu, it is acting contrary (to the rules) of this great family. Hot rays must not proceed from the cool beamed moon. 4. If thou art so impotent Oh king! let me return as I came. Thou promise-breaking Kákustha live happily with thy friends. 5. As the high spirited Viswámitra now moved with ire, the earth trembled under him, and the gods were filled with fear. 6. Vasishtha the meek and wise and observant of his vows, perceiving the great sage and friend of the world thus influenced by ire, gave vent to his speech (as follows). 7. Oh king that art born of the race of the Ikshákus, and art a form of virtue itself, and called Dasaratha the fortunate, and art adorned with all the good qualities known in the three worlds.

8. Being famed for thy meekness and strictness to thy vows, and renowned in all three worlds for thy virtues and fame, thou canst not break thy plighted faith. 9. Preserve thy virtue and think not to break thy faith, comply with the request of the sage who is honoured in all the three worlds. 10. Saying, thou wilt do it, if thou retract thy promise, thou losest the object of thy yet unfulfilled desires. Therefore part with Ráma from thee. 11. Descended from the race of Ikshaku, and being Dasaratha thyself, if thou failest to perform thy promise, who else on earth will ever keep his word? 12. It is in pursuance of the conduct of great men like thee, that low people even do not dare to transgress the bounds of their duty, how then dost thou wish to violate it thyself. 13. Guarded by this lion-like man (Viswámitra) in the manner of ambrosia by fire, no Rákshasa will have power to prevail over Ráma, whether he be accoutered and armed or not. 14. Behold him here as the personification of virtue, the mightiest of the mighty, and superior to all in the world in his intelligence, and devotedness to asceticism.

15. He is skilled in all warlike arms that are known in the three worlds, no other man knows them so well nor shall ever be able to master them like him. 16. Among the Gods, the Sages, the Asuras, the Rákshasas, the Nágas, the Yakshas and Gandharvas, there is none equal to him (in might). 17. In bygone days when this son of Kaushika used to rule over his realm, he was furnished with all the arms by Krisáswa, and which no enemy can baffle. 18. These arms were the progeny of Krisáswa, and were equally radiant and powerful as the progeny of the Prajápati, and followed him (in his train). 19. Now Daksha (the patriarch) had two beauteous daughters Jayá and Suprajá (alias Vijayá), who had a hundred offspring (as personifications of the implements), that are invincible in war. 20. Of these the favoured Jayá has given birth to fifty sons of old, who are implacable agents of the destruction of Asúra forces. 21. In like manner, Suprajá gave birth to fifty sons of very superior qualities, who are very powerful and terrible in their appearance, and indomitably aggressive.

22. Thus Viswámitra is strengthened and grown powerful (by means of these). He is acknowledged as a sage in the three worlds, Thou therefore must not think otherwise than deliver Ráma to him. 23. This mighty and virtuous man and prince of sages being nigh, any one even at the point of death in his presence, is sure to attain his immortality (on earth): therefore be not disheartened like an insensible man.

MELANCHOLY OF RÁMA. Válmíki related:—After Vasishtha had done saying in this manner, king Dasaratha was glad to send for Ráma with Lakshmana, and said: 2. Go you chamberlain, and bring here quickly the truly mighty and long armed Ráma with Lakshmana, for the meritorious purpose of removing the impediments (in the way of religious acts). 3. Thus sent by the king he went to the inner apartment, and coming back in a moment informed the king. 4. Oh sire! Ráma, whose arms have crushed all his foes, remains rapt in thoughts in his room like the bee closed in the lotus at night. 5. He said, he is coming in a moment, but is so abstracted in his lonely meditation that he likes no body to be near him. 6. Thus acquainted by the chamberlain, the king called one of the attendants of Ráma to him, and having given him every assurance, asked him to relate the particulars. 7. On being asked by the king how Ráma had come to that state, the attendant thus replied to him in a sorrowful mood. 8. Sir, we have also become as lean as sticks in our persons, in sorrow for the fading away of your son Ráma in his body.

9. The lotus-eyed Ráma appears dejected ever since he has come back from his pilgrimage in company with the Bráhmanas. 10. When besought by us with importunity to perform his daily rites, he sometimes discharges them with a placid countenance, and wholly dispenses with them at others. 11. He is averse, Oh Lord! to bathing, to worshipping the gods, to the distribution of alms, and to his meals also; and even when importuned by us he does not take his food with a good relish. 12. He no longer suffers himself to be rocked in the swinging cradles by the playful girls of the harem, nor does he divert himself under the showering fountains like the chátaka (in rain water). 13. No ornaments beset with the bud-shaped rubies, no bracelets nor necklace, Oh king, can please him now, in the same manner as nothing in heaven can please its inhabitants who expect their fall from it (after the expiration of their terms). 14. He is sorrowful even while sitting in the arbours of creepers, regaled by flowery breezes, and amidst the looks of damsels playing around him.

15. Whatever thing Oh king! is good and sweet, elegant and pleasing, to the soul, he looks at them with sorrowful eyes, like one whose eyes are already satiate with viewing them heaped up in piles (before him). 16. He would speak ill of the girls that would dance merrily before him, and exclaim out saying, “why should these ladies of the harem flutter about in this way causing grief in me.” 17. His doings are like those of a madman, who takes no delight at his food or rest, his vehicles or seats, his baths and other pleasures, however excellent they be. 18. As regards prosperity or adversity, his habitation or any other desirable things, he says of them to be all unreal, and then holds his silence. 19. He cannot be excited to pleasantry nor tempted to taste of pleasures; he attends to no business, but remains in silence. 20. No woman with her loosened locks and tresses, and the negligent glances of her eyes, can please him any more than the playful fawn can please the trees in the forest. 21. Like a man sold among savages, he takes delight in lonely places, in remotest skirts, in the banks (of rivers) and wild deserts.

22. His aversion to clothing and conveyance, food and presents, bespeaks O king! that he is following the line of life led by wandering ascetics. 23. He lives alone, Oh lord of men! in a lonely place, and neither laughs nor sings nor cries aloud from a sense of their indifference to him. 24. Seated in the posture of folded legs (Padmásana), he stays with a distracted mind, reclining his cheek on his left palm. 25. He assumes no pride to himself nor wishes for the dignity of sovereignty; he is neither elated with joy nor depressed by grief or pain. 26. We do not know where he goes, what he does, what he desires, what he meditates upon, whence and when he comes and what he follows. 27. He is getting lean every day, growing pale day by day, and like a tree at the end of autumn, he is becoming discoloured day after day. 28. Satrughna and Lakshmana are, Oh king! the followers of all his habits, and resemble his very shadows. 29. Being repeatedly asked by his servants, his brother-princes and his mothers (as to the cause of his dementedness), he says he has none, and then resumes his taciturnity and indifference.

30. He would lecture his companions and friends saying, “do not set your mind to sensual enjoyments which are only pleasing for the time being.” 31. He has no affection for the richly adorned women of the harem, but rather looks upon them as the cause of destruction presented before him. 32. He often chaunts in plaintive notes, how his life is being spent in vain cares, estranged from those of the easily attainable state of (heavenly bliss). 33. Should some dependant courtier speak of his being an emperor (one day), he smiles at him as upon a raving madman, and then remains silent as one distracted in his mind. 34. He does not pay heed to what is said to him, nor does he look at any thing presented before him. He hates to look upon things even the most charming (to sight). 35. As it is chimerical to suppose the existence of an etherial lake, and lotus growing in the same, so it is false to believe the reality of the mind and its conceptions. Saying so Ráma marvels at nothing. 36. Even when sitting amidst beauteous maids, the darts of Cupid fail to pierce his impenetrable heart, as showers of rain the (unimpregnable) rock.

37. That “no sensible man should ever wish for riches which are but the seats of dangers”; making this his motto, Ráma gives away all that he has to beggars. 38. He sings some verses to this effect that “it is an error to call one thing as prosperity and the other adversity, when they are both but imaginations of the mind”. 39. He repeats some words to this purport that, “though it is the general cry, “O I am gone, I am helpless grown,” yet it is a wonder, that no body should betake himself to utter indifference.” 40. That Ráma, the destroyer of enemies, the great Sála (oak) that is grown in the garden of Raghu, should get into such a state of mind is what causes grief in us. 41. We do not know, Oh great armed and lotus-eyed king! what to do with him in this state of his mind. We hope only in thee. 42. He laughs to scorn the counsels of the princes and Bráhmans before him, and spurns them as if they were fools. 43. He remains inactive with the conviction, that the world which appears to our view is a vanity, and the idea of self is also a vanity.

44. He has no respect for foes or friends, for himself or his kingdom, mother or riches, nor does he pay any regard to prosperity or adversity. 45. He is altogether quiescent, without any desire or effort, and devoid of a mainstay; he is neither captivated by any thing nor freed from worldly thoughts. These are the reasons which afflict us most. 46. He says, “what have we to do with riches, with our mothers, with this kingdom and all our activities.” Under these impressions, he is about to give up his life. 47. As the chátaka (swallow) grows restless at the obstruction of rains (by hurricanes), so has Ráma become impatient (under the restraint) of his father and mother, his friends and kingdom, his enjoyments and even his own life. 48. Now in compassion on thy son, incline to root out this chagrin which like a noxious creeper has been spreading its branches (in his mind). 49. For notwithstanding his possession of all affluence, he looks upon the enjoyments of the world as his poison under such a disposition of his mind. 50. Where is that potent person in this earth, who can restore him to proper conduct (as by a potent medicine?).

51. Who is there, that like the sun removing the darkness of the world by his rays, will remove the errors that have been the cause of grief in Ráma’s mind, and thereby make his generosity effectual in his case.

CONSOLATION OF RÁMA. Viswámitra said:—If such is the case, you who are intelligent, may go at once, and persuade that progeny of Raghu to come hither; as they do one deer by others (of the train). 2. This stupor of Ráma is not caused by any (external) accident or (inward) affection; it is I think the development of that superior intellect which rises from the right reasoning of dispassionate men. 3. Let Ráma come here for a while, and here shall we in a moment dispel the delusion (of his mind), as the wind drives away the clouds from the mountain-tops. 4. After his hebetude is removed by my reasoning, he shall be enabled to repose in that happy state of mind, to which we have arrived. 5. He shall not only attain to pure truth and a clear understanding of uninterrupted tranquility, but secure to himself a plumpness and beauteousness of his figure and complexion, as one derives from a potion of ambrosia. 6. He will then attend with all his heart to the full discharge of the proper course of his duties without remission, which will redound to his honour.

7. He will become strong with a knowledge of both worlds, and his exemption from the states of pleasure and pain, and then he will look upon gold and stones with an indifferent eye. 8. After the chief of the sages had spoken in this manner, the king resumed the firmness of his mind, and sent heralds after heralds to bring Ráma to him. 9. By this very time Ráma was preparing to rise from his seat in the palace to come over to his father, in the manner that the sun rises from the mountain in the east. 10. Surrounded by a few of his servants, he came with his two brothers to the hallowed hall of his father, resembling the heaven of the king of gods. 11. He saw at a distance his kingly sire seated amidst the assemblage of princes, as Indra surrounded by the gods. 12. He was accompanied on either side by the sages Vasishtha and Viswámitra, and respectfully attended by his staff of ministers, all well versed in the interpretation of all Sástras. 13. He was fanned by charming damsels, waving the fine chauri flappers in their hands, and equalling in beauty the goddesses presiding over the quarters of heaven.

14. Vasishtha, Viswámitra and the other sages, with Dasaratha and his chiefs, saw Ráma coming at a distance as beautiful as Skanda himself. 15. He appeared by his qualities of mildness and gravity to resemble the mount Himálaya (with his cooling frost and firmness), and was esteemed by all for the depth and clearness (of his understanding). 16. He was handsome and well proportioned (in his features), auspicious in his look, but humble and magnanimous in his mind. With loveliness and mildness of his person, he was possessed of all manly prowess. 17. He was just developed to youth, yet he was as majestic as an elderly man. He was neither morose nor merry, but seemed to be fully satisfied with himself, as if he had obtained all the objects of his desire. 18. He was a good judge of the world, and possessed of all holy virtues. The purity of his mind was the attraction for all the virtues which met in him. 19. The receptacle of his mind was filled by his magnanimity and honourable virtues, and the candour of his conduct showed him in the light of perfection (to every body).

20. Endowed with these various virtues and decorated by his necklace and fine apparel, Ráma the support of Raghu’s race, approached (his father) with a smiling countenance. 21. He bowed his head to his father with the sparkling gems trembling in his locks, and imparting to his head the graceful appearance of the mountain Sumeru shaken by an earth-quake. 22. The lotus-eyed Ráma came up to salute the feet of his father, when the lord of the sages (Viswámitra) was speaking with him. 23. First of all Ráma saluted his father, and then the two honorable sages, he next saluted the Bráhmanas, and then his relations, and lastly his elders and well wishing friends. 24. He then received and returned the salutations of the chiefs and princes, bowing to him with graceful motion of their heads and respectful addresses. 25. Ráma of god-like beauty and equanimity of mind, approached the sacred presence of his father, with the blessings of the two sages. 26. During the act of his saluting the feet of his father, the lord of the earth repeatedly kissed his head and face, and embraced him with fondness. 27. At the same time, he the destroyer of his enemies, embraced Lakshmana and Satrughna, with as intense an affection as the swan embracing the lotus flowers.

28. “Be you seated my son upon my lap”, said the king to Ráma, who however, took his seat on a fine piece of cloth spread on the floor by his servants. 29. The king said “O my son and receptacle of blessings, you have attained the age of discretion, so put not yourself to that state of self-mortification, as the dull-headed do from their crazy understandings. 30. “Know that it is by following the course of his elders, guides and Bráhmanas, that one attains to meritoriousness, and not by his persistence in error. 31. “So long will the train of our misfortunes lie at a distance, as we do not allow the seeds of error to have access to us.” 32. Vasishtha said, Oh strong armed prince! you are truly heroic to have conquered your worldly appetites, which are at once as difficult to be eradicated as they are fierce in their action. 33. Why do you allow yourself like the unlearned, to be drowned in this rolling sea of errors, causing such dull inactivity in you? 34. Viswámitra said “why are your eyes so unsteady (with doubts) as the tremulous clusters of blue lotuses. You ought to do away with this unsteadiness, and tell us what is that grief (which rankles) in your mind.

35. “What are these thoughts, and what are their names and natures, their number and causes, that infest your mind like its maladies (in the same manner) as the mice undermine a fabric.” 36. I am disposed to think, that you are not the person to be troubled with those evils and distempers, to which the base and vile alone are subject. 37. Tell me the craving of your heart, O sinless Ráma! and they will be requited in a manner, as will prevent their recurrence to you. 38. Ráma—the standard of Raghu’s race having listened to the reasonable and graceful speech of the good-intentioned sage, shook off his sorrowing, like the peacock at the roaring of a cloud, in the hope of gaining his object.

RÁMA’S REPLY. Válmíki related:—Being thus asked with soothing words by the chief of the sages, Ráma made his answer in a soft and graceful speech replete with good sense. 2. Ráma said, Oh venerable sage! I will tell thee in truth, untutored though I am, all the particulars as asked by thee; for who would disobey the bidding of the wise? 3. Since I was born in this mansion of my father I have all along remained, grown up and received my education (in this very place). 4. Then O leader of sages! being desirous to learn good usages (of mankind), I set out to travel to holy places all over this sea-girt earth. 5. It was by this time that there arose a train of reflections in my mind of the following nature which shook my confidence in worldly objects. 6. My mind was employed in the discrimination of the nature of things which led me gradually to discard all thoughts of sensual enjoyments. 7. What are these worldly pleasures good for, (thought I), and what means the multiplication (of our species) on earth? Men are born to die, and they die to be born again.

8. There is no stability in the tendencies of beings whether movable or immovable. They all tend to vice, decay and danger; and all our possessions are the grounds of our penury. 9. All objects (of sense) are detached from each other as iron rods or needles from one another; it is imagination alone which attaches them to our minds. 10. It is the mind that pictures the existence of the world as a reality, but the deceptiveness of the mind (being known) we are safe from such deception. 11. If the world is an unreality, it is <a> pity that ignorant men should be allured by it, like the deer tempted by a distant mirage (appearing) as water. 12. We are sold by none (to any one) and yet we remain as if enslaved to the world; and knowing this well, we are spellbound to riches, as it were by the magic wand of Sambara. 13. What are the enjoyments in this quintessence (of the world) but misery; and yet we are foolishly caught in its thoughts, as if clogged in honey (like bees). 14. Ah! I perceive after long that we have insensibly fallen into errors, like senseless stags falling into caverns in the wilderness.

15. Of what use is royalty and these enjoyments to me? What am I and whence are all these things? They are but vanities, and let them continue as such without any good or loss to any body. 16. Reasoning in this manner Oh Bráhman, I came to be disgusted with the world, like a traveller in (his journey through) a desert. 17. Now tell me, O venerable sir! whether this world is advancing to its dissolution, or continued reproduction, or is it in course of its endless progression. 18. If there is any progress here, it is that of the appearance and disappearance of old age and decease, of prosperity and adversity by turns. 19. Behold how the variety of our trifling enjoyments hastens our decay, they are like hurricanes shattering the mountain trees. 20. Men continue in vain to breathe their vital breath as hollow-bamboo wind-pipes having no sense. 21. How is (human) misery to be alleviated, is the (only) thought that consumes me like wild fire in the hollow of a withered tree. 22. The weight of worldly miseries sits heavy on my heart as a rock, and obstructs my lungs to breathe out. I have a mind to weep, but am prevented from shedding my tears for fear of my people.

23. My tearless weeping and speechless mouth, give no indication of my inward sorrow to any body, except my consciousness the silent witness in my solitude. 24. I wait to think on the positive and negative states (of worldly bliss), as a ruined man bewails to reflect on his former state of affluence (and present indigence). 25. I take prosperity to be a seducing cheat, for its deluding the mind, impairing the good qualities (of men), and spreading the net of our miseries. 26. To me, like one fallen into great difficulties, no riches, offspring, consorts or home afford any delight, but they seem to be (so many sources of) misery. 27. I, like a wild elephant in chains, find no rest in my mind, by reflecting on the various evils of the world, and by thinking on the causes of our frailties. 28. There are wicked passions prying at all times, under the dark mist of the night of our ignorance; and there are hundreds of objects, which like so many cunning rogues, are about all men in broad day-light, and lurking on all sides to rob us of our reason. What mighty champions can we delegate (now) to fight with these than our knowledge of truth?

VITUPERATION OF RICHES. Ráma said:—It is opulence, Oh sage! that is reckoned a blessing here; it is even she that is the cause of our troubles and errors. 2. She bears away as a river in the rainy season, all high-spirited simpletons overpowered by its current. 3. Her daughters are anxieties fostered by many a malpractice, like the waves of a stream raised by the winds. 4. She can never stand steady on her legs any where, but like a wretched woman who has burnt her feet, she limps from one place to another. 5. Fortune like a lamp both burns and blackens its possessor, until it is extinguished by its own inflammation. 6. She is unapproachable as princes and fools, and likewise as favourable as they to her adherents, without scanning their merits or faults. 7. She begets only evils in them by their various acts (of profligacy), as good milk given to serpents, serves but to increase the poignancy of their poison. 8. Men (by nature) are gentle and kind hearted to friends and strangers, until they are hardheartened by their riches, which like blasts of wind, serve to stiffen (the liquid) frost. 9. As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave, the grateful, the mild and gentle, corrupted by riches.

10. Riches do not conduce to one’s happiness, but redound to his woe and destruction, as the plant aconite when fostered, hides in itself the fatal poison. 11. A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a master wanting partiality, are the three rarities on earth. 12. The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cavern of a dragon, and as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of the Vindhyá mountain inhabited by fierce elephants. 13. Riches like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of men, and like moon-beams brings to bloom the buds of their misery. They blow away the brightness of a fair prospect as a hurricane, and resemble a sea with huge surges (of disquiet). 14. They bring upon us a cloud of fear and error, increase the poison of despondence and regret, and are like the dreadful snakes in the field of our choice. 15. Fortune is (as a killing) frost to the bondsmen of asceticism, and as the night to the owls of libertinism; she is an eclipse to the moonlight of reason, and as moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of folly.

16. She is as transitory as the Iris, and alike pleasant to view by the play of her colours; she is as fickle as the lightening, which vanishes no sooner it appears to sight. Hence none but the ignorant have reliance in her. 17. She is as unsteady as a well born damsel following a base-born man to the words; and like a (deceptive) mirage that tempts the run-aways to fall to it as the doe. 18. Unsteady as the wave, she is never steady in any place; (but is ever wavering to all sides) like the flickering flame of a lamp. So her leaning is known to nobody. 19. She like the lioness is ever prompt in fighting, and like the leader of elephants favourable to her partizans. She is as sharp as the blade of a sword (to cut off all obstacles), and is the patroness of sharp-witted sharpers. 20. I see no felicity in uncivil prosperity, which is full of treachery, and replete with every kind of danger and trouble. 21. It is pity that prosperity, like a shameless wench will again lay hold on a man, after being abandoned by him in his association with (her rival) Poverty.

22. What is she with all her loveliness and attraction of human hearts, but momentary thing obtained by all manner of evil means, and resembling at best a flower shrub, growing out of a cave inhabited by a snake, and beset by reptiles all about its stem.

DEPRECIATION OF HUMAN LIFE. Human life is as frail as a pendant drop of water tripling on the tip of a leaflet; and as irrepressible as a raving madman, that breaks loose from its bodily imprisonment out of its proper season. 2. Again the lives of those whose minds are infected by the poison of worldly affairs, and who are incapable of judging for themselves, are (verily) but causes of their torment. 3. Those knowing the knowable, and resting in the all-pervading spirit, and acquiescing alike to their wants and gains, enjoy lives of perfect tranquility. 4. We that have certain belief of our being but limited beings, can have no enjoyment in our transient lives, which are but flashes of lightenings amidst the cloudy sky of the world. 5. It is as impossible to keep the winds in confinement, to tear asunder the sky to pieces, and wreathe the waves to a chaplet, as to place any reliance in our lives. 6. Fast as the fleeting clouds in autumn, and short as the light of an oilless lamp, our lives appear to pass away as evanescent as the rolling waves in the sea.

7. Rather attempt to lay hold on the shadow of the moon in the waves, the fleeting lightenings in the sky, and the ideal lotus blossoms in the ether, than ever place any reliance upon this unsteady life. 8. Men of restless minds, desiring to prolong their useless and toilsome lives, resemble the she-mule conceiving by a horse (which causes her destruction abortion or unfructification). 9. This world (Sansára) is as a whirlpool amidst the ocean of creation, and every individual body is as (evanescent) as a foam or froth or bubble, which can give me no relish in this life. 10. That is called true living, which gains what is worth gaining, which has no cause of sorrow or remorse, and which is a state of transcendental tranquility. 11. There is a vegetable life in plants, and an animal life in beasts, and birds: man leads a thinking life, but true life is above (the succession of) thoughts. 12. All those living beings are said to have lived well in this earth, who being once born herein have no more to return to it. The rest are no better than old asses (of burthen).

13. Knowledge is an encumbrance to the unthinking, and wisdom is cumbersome to the passionate; intellect—is a heavy load to the restless, and the body is a ponderous burden to one ignorant of his soul. 14. A goodly person possessed of life, mind, intellect and self-consciousness and its occupations, is of no avail to the unwise, but seem to be his over-loadings as those upon a porter. 15. The discontented mind is the great arena of all evils, and the nestling place of diseases which alight upon it like birds of the air: such a life is the abode of toil and misery. 16. As a house is slowly dilapidated by the mice continually burrowing under it, so is the body of the living gradually corroded by the (pernicious) teeth of time boring within it. 17. Deadly diseases bred within the body, feed upon our vital breath, as poisonous snakes born in caves of the woods consume the meadow air. 18. As the withered tree is perforated by minutest worms residing in them, so are our bodies continually wasted by many inborn diseases and noxious secretions. 19. Death is incessantly staring and growling at our face, as a cat looks and purrs at the mouse in order to devour it.

20. Old age wastes us as soon as a glutton digests his food; and it reduces one to weakness as an old harlot, by no other charm than her paint and perfumes. 21. Youth forsakes us as soon, as a good man abandons his wicked friend in disgust, after his foibles come to be known to him in a few days. 22. Death the lover of destruction, and friend of old age and ruin, likes the sensual man, as a lecher likes a beauty. 23. Thus there is nothing so worthless in the world as this life, which is devoid of every good quality and ever subject to death, unless it is attended by the permanent felicity of emancipation.

OBLOQUY ON EGOISM. Ráma continued:— Egoism springs from false conceit, and it is vanity (or vain glory) which fosters it; I am much afraid of this baneful egotism which is an enemy (to human kind). 2. It is under the influence of egotism that all men in this diversified world, and even the very poorest of them, fall into the dungeon of evils, and misdeeds. 3. All accidents, anxieties, troubles and wicked exertions proceed from egoism or self-confidence; hence I deem egoism as a disease. 4. Being subject to that everlasting arch-enemy—the cynic egoism, I have refrained from my food and drink. What other enjoyment is there for me to partake of? 5. This world resembles a long continuous night, in which our egoism like a hunter, spreads the snare of affections (to entrap us in it). 6. All our great and intolerable miseries, growing as rank as the thorny plants of the catechu, are but results of our egoism. 7. It overcasts the equanimity of mind as an eclipse overshadows the moon; it destroys our virtues as a frost destroys the lotus flowers; it dispels the peace of men as the autumn drives away the clouds. I must therefore get rid of this egoistic feeling.

8. I am not Ráma the prince, I have no desire nor should I wish for affluence; but I wish to have the peace of my mind and remain as the self-satisfied old sage Jina. 9. All that I have eaten, done or offered in sacrifice under the influence of egoism, have gone for nothing; it is the absence of egoism which (I call) to be real good. 10. So long, O Bráhman! as there is (the feeling of) egoism in one, he is subject to sorrow at his difficulties; but being devoid of it, he becomes happy; hence it is better to be without it. 11. I am free from anxiety, O sage! ever since I have got the tranquility of my mind after giving up my (sense of) egoism; and known the transitoriness of all enjoyments. 12. As long, O Bráhman! as the cloud of egoism overspreads (the region of our minds), so long our desires expand themselves like the buds of kurchi plants (in the rains). 13. But when the cloud of egoism is dispersed, the lightning of avarice vanishes away, just as the lamp being extinguished, its light immediately disappears. 14. The mind vaunts with egoism, like a furious elephant in the Vindhyan hills, when it hears the thunder-claps in the clouds.

15. Again egoism residing like a lion in the vast forest of all human bodies, ranges about at large throughout the whole extent of this earth. 16. The self-conceited are decorated with a string of pearls about their necks, of which avarice forms the thread, and repeated births—the pearls. 17. Our inveterate enemy of egoism, has (like a magician) spread about us the enchantments of our wives, friends and children, whose spells it is hard to break. 18. As soon as the (impression of the) word (ego) is effaced from the mind, all our anxieties and troubles are wiped out of it. 19. The cloud of egoism being dispelled from the sky of our minds, the mist of error which it spreads to destroy our peace, will be dispersed also. 20. I have given up my (sense of) egoism, yet is my mind stupified with sorrow by my ignorance. Tell me, O Bráhman! what thou thinkest right for me under these circumstances. 21. I have with much ado given up this egoism, and like no more to resort to this source of all evils and perturbation. It retains its seat in the breast for our annoyance only, and without benefiting us by any good quality of its own. Direct me now, you men of great understandings! (to what is right).

THE UNGOVERNABLENESS OF THE MIND. Our minds are infested by evil passions and faults, and fluctuate in their observance of duty and service to superiors, as the plumes of a peacock fluttering at the breeze. 2. They rove about at random with ardour and without rest from one place to another, like the poor village dog running afar and wide in quest of food. 3. It seldom finds any thing any where, and happening even to get a good store some where, it is as little content with it as a wicker vessel filled with water. 4. The vacant mind, Oh sage! is ever entrapped in its evil desires, and is never at rest with itself; but roves at large as a stray deer separated from its herd. 5. Human mind is of the nature of the unsteady wave, and as light as the minutest particle. It can therefore have no rest in spite of (the fickleness and levity of) its nature. 6. Disturbed by its thoughts, the mind is tossed in all directions, like the waters of the milk-white ocean when churned by the Mandara mountain.

7. I can not curb my mind, resembling the vast ocean (in its course), and running with its huge surges (of the passions), with whirlpools (of error), and beset by the whales of delusion. 8. Our minds run afar, O Bráhman! after sensual enjoyments, like the deer running towards the tender blades of grass, and unmindful of falling into the pits (hid under them). 9. The mind can never get rid of its wavering state owing to the habitual fickleness of its nature, resembling the restlessness of the sea. 10. The mind with its natural fickleness and restless thoughts, finds no repose at any place, as a lion (has no rest) in his prison-house. 11. The mind seated in the car of delusion, absorbs the sweet, peaceful and undisturbed rest of the body, like the gander sucking up pure milk from amidst the water. 12. O chief of sages! I grieve much to find the faculties of the mind lying dormant upon the bed of imaginary delights, from which it is hard to waken them. 13. I am caught, O Bráhman! like a bird in the net by the knots (of my egoism), and held fast in it by the thread of my avarice.

14. I burn in my mind, O sage, like the dried hay on fire, by the flame of my anxieties and under the spreading fumes of my impatience. 15. I am devoured, O Bráhman! like a clod of cold meat, by the cruelty and greediness of my heart, as a carcase is swallowed by a hungry dog and its greedy mate. 16. I am borne away, O sage! by the current of my heart, as a tree on the bank is carried away by the waters and waves beating upon it. 17. I am led afar by my (greedy) mind, like a straw carried off by the hurricane, either to flutter in the air or fall upon the ground. 18. My earthly mindedness has put a stop to my desire of crossing over the ocean of the world, as an embankment stops the course of the waters (of a stream). 19. I am lifted up and let down again by the baseness of my heart, like a log of wood tied to a rope dragging it in and out of a well. 20. As a child is seized by the false apparition of a demon, so I find myself in the grasp of my wicked mind, representing falsities as true.

21. It is hard to repress the mind, which is hotter than fire, more inaccessible than a hill, and stronger than a thunder bolt. 22. The mind is attracted to its objects as a bird to its prey, and has no respite for a moment as a boy from his play. 23. My mind resembling the sea both in its dullness as well as restlessness, in its extent and fulness with whirlpools and dragons, keeps me far from advancing towards it. 24. It is more difficult to subdue the mind than to drink off the ocean, or to upset the Sumeru mountain. It is ever harder than the hardest thing. 25. The mind is the cause of all exertions, and the sensorium of the three worlds. Its weakness weakens all worldliness, and requires to be cured with care. 26. It is the mind from which arise our pains and pleasures by hundreds, as the woods growing in groups upon a hill; but no sooner is the scythe of reason applied to them, than they fall off one by one.

27. I am ready to subdue my mind which is my greatest enemy in this world, for the purpose of mastering all the virtues, which the learned say depend upon it. My want of desires has made me averse to wealth and the gross pleasures it yields, which are as tints of clouds tainting the (clear disk of the) moon (of our mind).

ON CUPIDITY. I see our vices like a flock of owls flying about in the region of our minds, under the darkness of our affections, and in the lonesome night of our avarice. 2. I am parched by my anxieties like the wet clay under solar rays, infusing an inward heat in it by extraction of its soft moisture. 3. My mind is like a vast and lonesome wilderness, covered under the mist of errors, and infested by the terrible fiend of desire is continually floundering about it. 4. My wailings and tears serve only to expand and mature my anxiety, as the dews of night open and ripen the blossoms of beans and give them a bright golden hue. 5. Avarice by raising expectations in men, serves only to whirl them about, as the vortex of the sea wallows the marine animals in it. 6. The stream of worldly avarice flows like a rapid current within the rock of my body, with precipitate force (in my actions), and loud resounding waves (of my speech). 7. Our minds are driven by foul avarice from one place to another, as the dusty dry hays are borne away by the winds, and as the Chátakas are impelled by thirst to fly about (for drink).

8. It is avarice which destroys all the good qualities and grace which we adopted to ourselves in good faith, just as the mischievous mouse severs the wires (of a musical instrument). 9. We turn about upon the wheel of our cares, like withered leaves (floating) upon the water, and like dry grass uplifted by the wind, and as autumnal clouds (moving) in the sky. 10. Being over powered by avarice, we are disable to reach the goal (of perfection), as a bird entangled in the snare, is kept from its flight. 11. I am so greatly burnt by the flame of avarice, that I doubt whether this inflammation may be assuaged even by administration of nectar itself. 12. Avarice like a heated-mare takes me far and farther still from my place, and brings me back to it again and again. Thus it hurries me up and down and to and fro in all directions for ever. 13. We are pulled up and cast down again like a bucket in the well, by the string of avarice (tied about our necks). 14. Man is led about like a bullock of burthen by his avarice, which bends his heart as fast as the string does the beast, and which it is hard for him to break.

15. As the huntress spreads her net to catch birds in it, so does our affection for our friends, wives and children stretch these snares to entrap us every day. 16. Avarice like a dark night terrifies even the wise, blindfolds the keen-sighted, and depresses the spirit of the happiest of men. 17. Our appetite is as heinous as a serpent, soft to feel, but full of deadly poison, and bites us as soon as it is felt. 18. It is also like a black sorceress that deludes men by her magic, but pierces him in his heart, and exposes him to danger afterwards. 19. This body of ours shattered by our avarice is like a worn out lute, fastened by arteries resembling the wires, but emitting no pleasing sound. 20. Our avarice is like the long fibered, dark and juicy poisonous creeper called Kaduka, that grows in the caverns of mountains, and maddens men by its flavour. 21. Avarice is as vain and inane, fruitless and aspiring, unpleasant and perilous, as the dry twig of a tree, which (bears no fruit or flower) but is hurtful with its prickly point. 22. Venality is like a churlish old woman, who from the incontinence of her heart, courts the company of every man, without gaining the object of her desire.

23. Greediness as an old actress plays her various parts in the vast theatre of world, in order to please the different tastes of her audience. 24. Parsimony is as a poisonous plant growing in the wide wilderness of the world, bearing old age and infirmity as its flowers, and producing our troubles as its fruits. 25. Our churlishnesss resembles an aged actress, attempting a manly feat she has not the strength to perform, yet keeping up the dance without pleasing (herself or any body). 26. Our fleeting thoughts are as fickle as pea-hens, soaring over inaccessible heights under the clouds (of ignorance); but ceasing to fly in the day light (of reason). 27. Avarice is like a river in the rains, rising for a time with its rolling waves, and afterwards lying low in its empty bed. (Such are the avaricious by the flux and reflux of their fortunes). 28. Avarice is as inconstant as a female bird, which changes her mates at times, and quits the arbor that no longer bears any fruit. 29. The greedy are as unsteady as the flouncing monkey, which is never restive at any place, but moves to places impassable by others, and craving for fruits even when satiate.

30. The acts of avarice are as inconstant as those of chance, both of which are ever on the alert, but never attended with their sequence. 31. Our venality is like a black-bee sitting upon the lotus of our hearts, and thence making its rambles above, below and all about us in a moment. 32. Of all worldly evils, avarice is the source of the longest woe. She exposes to peril even the most secluded man. 33. Avarice like a group of clouds, is fraught with a thick mist of error, obstructing the light of heaven, and causing a dull insensibility (in its possessor). 34. Penury which seems to gird the breasts of worldly people with chains of gems and jewels, binds them as beasts with halters about the necks. 35. Covetousness stretches itself long and wide and presents to us a variety of hues as the rainbow. It is equally unsubstantial and without any property as the iris, resting in vapour and vacuum and being but a shadow itself. 36. It burns away our good qualities as electric fire does the hay; it numbs our good sense as the frost freezes the lotus; it grows our evils as autumn does the grass; and it increases our ignorance as the winter prolongs the night.

37. Greediness is as an actress in the stage of the world; she is as a bird flying out of the nest of our houses; as a deer running about in the desert of our hearts; and as a lute making us sing and dance at its tune. 38. Our desires like billows toss us about in the ocean of our earthly cares; they bind us fast to delusion as fetters do the elephant. Like the ficus indicus they produce the roots of our regeneration, and like moon beams they put our budding woes to bloom. 39. Avarice like (Pandora’s) box is filled with miseries, decrepitude and death, and is full of disorder and disasters like a mad bacchanal. 40. Our wishes are sometimes as pure as light and at others as foul as darkness; now they are as clear as the milky way, and again as obscure as thickest mists. 41. All our bodily troubles are avoided by our abstaining from avarice, as we are freed from fear of night goblins at the dispersion of darkness. 42. So long do men remain in their state of (dead like) dumbness and mental delirium, as they are subject to the poisonous cholic of avarice.

43. Men may get rid of their misery by their being freed from anxieties. It is the abandonment of cares which is said to be the best remedy of avarice. 44. As the fishes in a pond fondly grasp the bait in expectation of a sop, so do the avaricious lay hold on any thing, be it wood or stone or even a straw. 45. Avarice like an acute pain excites even the gravest of men to motion, just as the rays of the sun raise the lotus blossoms (above the water). 46. It is compared with the bamboo in its length, hollowness, hard knots, and thorny prickles, and yet it is entertained in expectation of its yielding the manna and a pearly substance. 47. Yet it is a wonder that high-minded men, have been able to cut off this almost unseverable knot of avarice, by the glittering sword of reason: 48. As neither the edge of the sword, nor the fire of lightening, nor the sparks of the red-hot iron, are sharp enough to sever the keen avarice seated in our hearts.

49. It is like the flame of a lamp which is bright but blackening and acutely burning at its end. It is fed by the oily wicks (of years), is vivid in all, but never handled by any body. 50. Penury has the power of bemeaning the best of men to (the baseness of) straws in a moment, notwithstanding their wisdom, heroism and gravity in other respects. 51. Avarice is like the great valley of the Vindhyá hills, that is beset with deserts and impenetrable forests, is terrible and full of snares laid by the hunters, and filled with the dust and mist (of delusion). 52. One single avarice has every thing in the world for its object, and though seated in the breast, it is imperceptible to all. It is as the undulating Milky ocean in this fluctuating world, sweeping all things yet regaling mankind with its odorous waves.

OBLOQUY OF THE BODY. This body of ours that struts about on earth, is but a mass of humid entrails and tendons, tending to decay and disease, and to our torment alone. 2. It is neither quiescent nor wholly sentient, neither ignorant nor quite intelligent. Its inherent soul is a wonder, and it is reason (and its absence) that makes it graceful or otherwise. 3. The sceptic is doubtful of its inertness and intellection: and the unreasonable and ignorant people are ever subject to error and illusion. 4. The body is as easily gratified with a little, as it is exhausted in an instant, hence there is nothing so pitiable, abject and worthless as our bodies. 5. The face is as frail as a fading flower: now it shoots forth its teeth like filaments, and now it dresses itself with blooming and blushing smiles as blossoms. 6. The body is as a tree, having its arms resembling the branches, the shoulder-blades like stems, the teeth as rows of birds, the eye-holes like its hollows, and the head as a big fruit.

7. The ears are as two wood-peckers, the fingers of both hands and feet as so many leaves of the branches, the diseases as (parasite) plants, and the acts of the body are as axes felling this tree, which is the seat of the two birds the soul and intelligence. 8. This shady arbor of the body, is but the temporary resort of the passing soul, what then whether it be akin to or apart from anybody, or whether one would rely in it or not. 9. What man is there, O venerable fathers! that would stoop to reflect within himself, that this body is repeatedly assumed only to serve him as a boat to pass over the sea of the world. 10. Who can rely any confidence in his body, which is as a forest full of holes, and abounds in hairs resembling its trees? 11. The body composed of flesh, nerves and bones, resembles a drum without any musical sound, and yet I sit watching it as a cat (for the squeaking of mice). 12. Our bodies are as trees growing in the forest of the world, bearing the flowers of anxiety, and perforated by the worms of woe and misery, and mounted upon by the apish mind.

13. The body with its smiling face appears a goodly plant, bearing the fruits both of good and evil; but it has become the abode of the dragon of avarice, and a rookery of the ravens of anger. 14. Our arms are as the boughs of trees, and our open palms like beautiful clusters of flowers, the other limbs are as twigs and leaves, and are continually shaken by the breath of life. 15. The two legs are the erect stems (of the arbor of the body), and the organs are the seats of the birds of sense. Its youthful bloom is a shade for the passing traveller of love. 16. The hanging hairs of the head resemble the long grass growing on the tree (of the body); and egoism like a vulture (in hollow), cracks the ear with its hideous shrieks. 17. Our various desires like the pendant roots and fibres of the fig tree, seem to support its trunk of the body, though it is worn out by labour to unpleasantness. 18. The body is the big abode of its owner’s egoism, and therefore it is of no interest to me whether it lasts or falls (for egoism is the bane of happiness).

19. This body which is linked with its limbs like beasts of burthen labour, and is the abode of its mistress Avarice—painted over by her taints of passions, affords me no delight whatever. 20. This abode of the body which is built by the frame-work of the back-bone and ribs, and composed of cellular vessels, tied together by ropes of the entrails, is no way desirable to me. 21. This mansion of the body, which is tied with strings of the tendons, and built with the clay of blood and moisture, and plastered white with old age, is no way suited to my liking. 22. The mind is the architect and master of this bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports and servants; it is filled with errors and delusions which I do not like. 23. I do not like this dwelling of the body with its bed of pleasure on one side, and the cries of pain as those of its children on the other, and where our evil desires are at work like its bawling hand-maids. 24. I cannot like this body, which like a pot of filth, is full of the foulness of worldly affairs, and mouldering under the rust of our ignorance.

25. It is a hovel standing on the two props of our heels, and supported by the two posts of our legs. 26. It is no lovely house where the external organs are playing their parts, while its mistress the understanding sits inside with her brood of anxieties. 27. It is a hut which is thatched over with the hairs on the head, decorated with the turrets of the ears, and adorned with jewels on the crest, which I do not like. 28. This house of the body is walled about by all its members, and beset by hairs growing like ears of corn on it. It has an empty space of the belly within (which is never full), and which I do not like. 29. This body with its nails as those of spiders, and its entrails growling within like barking dogs, and the internal winds emitting fearful sounds, is never delightsome to me. 30. What is this body but a passage for the ceaseless inhaling and breathing out of the vital air? Its eyes are as two windows which are continually oped and closed by the eyelids. I do not like such a mansion as this.

31. This mansion of the body with its formidable (wide-open) door of the mouth, and (ever-moving) bolt of the tongue and bars of the teeth, is not pleasant to me. 32. This house of the body, having the white-wash of ointments on the outer skin, and the machinery of the limbs in continued motion, and the restless mind burrowing its base like the mischievous mouse, is not liked by me. 33. Sweet smiles like shining lamps, serve to lighten this house of the body for a moment, but it is soon darkened by a cloud of melancholy, wherefore I cannot be pleased with it. 34. This body which is the abode of diseases, and subject to wrinkles and decay, and all kinds of pain, is a mansion wherewith I am not pleased. 35. I do not like this wilderness of the body, which is infested by the bears of the senses. It is empty and hollow within, with dark groves (of entrails) in the inside. 36. I am unable, O chief of sages! to drag my domicile of the body, just as a weak elephant is incapable to draw out another immerged in a muddy pit.

37. Of what good is affluence or royalty, this body and all its efforts to one, when the hand of time must destroy them all in a few days. 38. Tell me, O sage! what is charming in this body, that is only a composition of flesh and blood both within and without it and frail in its nature. 39. The body does not follow the soul upon death; tell me Sir, what regard should the learned have for such an ungrateful thing as this. 40. It is as unsteady as the ears of an infuriate elephant, and as fickle as drops of water that trickle on their tips. I should like therefore to abandon it, before it comes to abandon me. 41. It is as tremulous as the leaves of a tree shaken by the breeze, and oppressed by diseases and fluctuations of pleasure and pain. I have no relish in its pungency and bitterness. 42. With all its food and drink for evermore, it is as tender as a leaflet and is reduced to leanness in spite of all our cares, and runs fast towards its dissolution.

43. It is repeatedly subjected to pleasure and pain, and to the succession of affluence and destitution, without being ashamed of itself as the shameless vulgar herd (at their ups and downs). 44. Why nourish this body any longer, when it acquires no excellence nor durability of its state, after its enjoyment of prosperity and exercise of authority for a length of time. 45. The bodies of the rich as well as those of the poor, are alike subject to decay and death at their appointed times. 46. The body lies as a tortoise in the cave of avarice amidst the ocean of the world. It remains there in the mud in a mute and torpid state, without an effort for its liberation. 47. Our bodies floating as heaps of wood on the waves of the world, serve at last for the fuel of funeral fire (on the pile); except a few of these which pass for human bodies in the sight of the wise. 48. The wise have little to do with this tree of the body, which is beset by evils like noxious orchids about it, and produces the fruit of perdition. 49. The body like a frog, lies merged in the mire of mortality, where it perishes no sooner it is known to have lived and gone.

50. Our bodies are as empty and fleeting as gusts of wind, passing over a dusty ground, where nobody knows whence they come, and whither they go. 51. We know not the course of our bodies (their transmigrations), as we do not know those of the winds, light and our thoughts; they all come and go, but from where and whither, we know nothing of. 52. Fie and shame to them, that are so giddy with the ebriety of their error, as to rely on any state or durability of their bodies. 53. They are the best of men, O sage! whose minds are at rest with the thought, that their ego does not subsist in their bodies, nor are the bodies theirs at the end (of their lives). 54. Those mistaken men that have a high sense of honor and fear dishonor, and take a pleasure in the excess of their gains, are verily the killers both of their bodies and souls. 55. We are deceived by the delusion of egoism, which like a female fiend (sorceress) lies hid within the cavity of the body with all her sorcery. 56. Our reason unaided (by religion) is kept in bondage like a female slave within the prison of our bodies, by the malicious fiend of false knowledge (or sophistry).

57. It is certain that whatever we see here is unreal, and yet it is a wonder, that the mass of men are led to deception by the vile body, which has injured the cause of the soul. 58. Our bodies are as fleeting as the drops of a water-fall, and they fall off in a few days like the withered leaves of trees. 59. They are as quickly dissolved as bubbles in the ocean; it is in vain therefore that it should hurl about in the whirlpool of business. 60. I have not a moment’s reliance in this body, which is ever hastening to decay; and I regard its changeful delusions as a state of dreaming. 61. Let those who have any faith in the stability of the lightning, of the autumn clouds, and in glacial castles, place their reliance in this body. 62. It has outdone all other things that are doomed to destruction in its instability and perishableness. It is moreover subject to very many evils; wherefore I have set it at naught as a straw, and thereby obtained my repose.

BLEMISHES OF BOYHOOD. One receiving his birth in the unstable ocean of the world, which is disturbed by the billows of the bustle of business, has to pass his boyhood in sufferings only. 2. Want of strength and sense, and subjection to diseases and dangers, muteness and appetence, joined with longings and helplessness, are the concomitants of infancy. 3. Childhood is chained to fretting and crying, to fits of anger, craving and every kind of incapacity, as an elephant when tied to the post by its shackles. 4. The vexations which tease the infant breast, are far greater than those which trouble us in youth and old age, or disturb one in disease, danger or at the approach of death. 5. The acts of a boy are as those of young animals, that are always restless and snubbed by every body. Hence boyhood is more intolerable than death itself. 6. How can boyhood be pleasing to any body, when it is but a semblance of gross ignorance, and full of whims and hobbies, and ever subject to miscarriages. 7. It is this silly boyhood which is in constant dread of dangers arising at every step from fire, water and air, and which rarely betide us in other states of life.

8. Boys are liable to very many errors in their plays and wicked frolics, and in all their wishes and attempts beyond their capacities: hence boyhood is the most perilous state (of life). 9. Boys are engaged in false pursuits and wicked sports, and are subject to all foolish puerilities. Hence boyhood is fit for the rod and not for rest. 10. All faults, misconduct, transgressions and heart-aches, lie hidden in boyhood like owls in hollow caves. 11. Fie to those ignorant and foolish people, who are falsely led to imagine boyhood as the most pleasant period of life. 12. How can boyhood appear pleasing to any one, when the mind swings like a cradle towards every object of desire, however wrong it is deemed to be in both worlds. 13. The minds of all living beings are ever restless, but those of young people are ten times more at unrest. 14. The mind is naturally unsteady, and so is boyhood also. Say what can save us from that state of life, when both these vagrant things combine to our destruction. 15. The glances of women, the flashes of lightning, the flame of fire, and the ever-rolling waves, have all imitated the fickleness of boyhood.

16. Minority seems to be a twin brother to the mind, and resembles it in the unsteadiness and frailty of all its purposes. 17. All kinds of miseries, misdeeds and miscarriages await on boyhood, as all sorts of men hang upon the rich (for their supportance). 18. Boys are fond of fresh things at all times, and on their failing to get the same, they fall to a fainting fit, as if from the effect of poison. 19. A boy like a dog, is as easily tamed as he is irritated at a little, and he is as glad to lie in the dust, as to play with dirt. 20. A foolish fretful boy with his body daubed in mire with the tears in his eyes, appears as a heap of dry clay soiled by a shower of rain. 21. Boys are subject to fear and voracity; they are helpless but fond of every thing they have seen or heard, and equally fickle in their bodies and mind. Hence boyhood is a source of troubles only. 22. The foolish and helpless child, becomes as sad and sour when he fails to get the object of his fancy, as when he is thwarted from the thing desired.

23. Children have much difficulty to get at the things they want, and which they can ask only by indistinct words. Hence no one suffers so much as boys. 24. A boy is as much irritated by the eagerness of his whimsical desires, as a patch of ground in the desert is parched by the summer heat. 25. A boy on entering his school, is subjected to corrections, which are as painful to him as the goading and fetters to the elephant. 26. A great many whims and hobbies, and a variety of false fancies, tend continually to afflict boyhood, which is ever fond of toys and trifles. 27. How can senseless childhood be said to be a happy state of life, when the child is led by its ignorance to swallow everything in the world, and to wish to lay hold on the moon in the sky. 28. Say great sage! what difference is there between a child and a tree, both of which have sensitiveness, but unable to defend themselves from heat and cold. 29. Boys are of the nature of birds, being both subject to fear and hunger, and ready to fly about when impelled by them.

30. Again boyhood is the abode of fear from all sides; such as from the tutor, father, mother, elder brother and elderly boys, and from every body besides. 31. Hence the hopeless state of childhood, which is full of faults and errors, and addicted to sports and thoughtlessness, cannot be satisfactory to any body.

VITUPERATION OF YOUTH. Ráma continued:— The boy having passed his state of blemishes, gladly steps to his youth with hopes of gaining his objects that tend only to his ruin. 2. The insensible youth feels at this time the wanton inclinations of his loose mind, and goes on falling from one tribulation to another. 3. He is overcome as one subdued by the power of delusive Cupid, lying hidden in the cavity of the heart (hence called Manoja). 4. His ungoverned mind gives rise to loose thoughts like those of voluptuous women, and these serve to beguile him like the magic collyrium (in the hand) of boys (called Siddhánjana). 5. Vices of the most heinous kind betake persons of such (perverse) minds in their youth, and lead them to their ruin. 6. The paths of youth lead them to the gate of hell through a maze of errors. Those that have been left uncorrupt by their youth, are not to be corrupted by anything else. 7. Whoso has passed the dreadfully enchanted coast of youth, fraught with various flavours and wonders, are said to be truly wise.

8. I take no delight in our unwelcome youth, which appears to us in the form of a momentary flash of lightning, and soon succeeded by the loud roaring of the clouds (of manhood). 9. Youth like rich wine is sweet and delicious (at first), but becomes bitter, insipid and noxious in a short time. Hence it is not delectable to me. 10. Youth appearing (at first) as a reality, is found to be a false, transient thing, as deceptive as a fairy dream by night. Hence I like it not. 11. It is the most charming of all things to men, but its charm is soon lost and fled. Therefore the phantasmagoria of youth is not pleasing to me. 12. Youth as an arrow-shot is pleasant to see, but painful to feel its smart. Hence I do not like youth that produces blood heat (in the veins). 13. Youth as a harlot is charming at first sight, but turning heartless soon after. Hence it is not to my liking. 14. As the efforts of a dying man are all for his torment, so the exertions of the young are portentous of his destruction.

15. Puberty advances as a dark night spreading the shadow of destruction. It darkens the heart and mind by its hedious appearance, and intimidates even the god (Siva himself). 16. Errors growing in youth, cause copious mistakes in life, by upsetting good sense and setting at naught the approved good manners (of society). 17. The raging fire in the hearts of the young, caused by separation of their mates, burns them down like trees by a wild fire. 18. As a clear, sacred and wide stream, becomes muddy in the rains, so doth the mind of man however clear, pure and expanded it may be, gets polluted in his youth. 19. It is possible for one to cross over a river made terrible by its waves, but no way possible to him to get over the boisterous expanse of his youthful desires. 20. O how (lamentably) is one’s youth worn out with the thoughts of his mistress, her swollen breasts, her beautiful face and her sweet caresses. 21. The young man afflicted with the pain of soft desire, is regarded by the wise in no better light than a fragment of (useless) straw. 22. Youth is the stake of haughty self-esteem, as the rack is for the immolation of the elephant giddy with its frontal pearl.

23. Youth is a lamentable forest, where the mind as the root of all, gives growth to jungles of (love sick) groans and sighs, and tears of sorrow. The vices of this time, are as venomous snakes of the forest. 24. Know youthful bloom of the person to resemble the blooming lotus of the lake:—the one is full of affections, bad desires and evil intents, as the other is fraught with bees, filaments, petals and leaves. 25. The new bloom of youth is the resort of anxiety and disease, which like two birds with their (black and white) plumage of vice and virtue, frequent the fountain of the young man’s heart. 26. Early youth resembles a deep sea, disturbed by the waves of numberless amusements, transgressing all bounds, and regardless of death and disease. 27. Youth is like a furious gust of wind, over-loaded with the dust of pride and vanity, and sweeps away every trace of the good qualities (early acquired by one). 28. The rude dust of the passions of youths, disfigures their face, and the hurricane of their sensualities cover their good qualities (as flying leaves overspread the ground). 29. Youthful vigour awakens a series of faults, and destroys a group of good qualities, by increasing the vice of pleasures.

30. Youthful bloom confines the fickle mind to some beauteous person, as the bright moon-beams serve to shut the flitting bee in the dust of the closing lotus. 31. Youth like a delightsome cluster of flowers, growing in the arbour of human body, attracts the mind as the bee to it, and makes it giddy (with its sweets). 32. The human mind anxious to derive pleasure from the youthfulness of the body, falls into the cave of sensuality, as a deer running after the mirage of desert heat, falls down into a pit. 33. I take no delight in moony youth, which guilds the dark body with its beams, and resembles the stern mane of the leonine mind. It is a surge in the ocean of our lives (that tosses us all about). 34. There is no reliance in youth, which fades away as soon as summer flowers in this desert of the body. 35. Youth is as a bird, and as soon flies away from our bodily cage as the philosopher’s stone, which quickly disappears from the hands of the unfortunate. 36. As youth advances to its highest pitch, so the feverish passions wax stronger for our destruction only.

37. As long as the night (delusion) of youth does not come to its end, so long the fiends of our passion do not cease to rage in the desert of the body. 38. Pity me, O sage! in this state of youth, which is so full of perturbations, as to have deprived me of the sight (light) of reason. O pity me as thou wouldst for thy dying son. 39. The foolish man who ignorantly rejoices at his transient youth, is considered as a human beast. 40. The foolish fellow who is fond of his youth which is flushed with pride and fraught with errors, comes to repent (of his folly) in a short time. 41. Those great minded men are honoured on earth, who have safely passed over the perils of youth. 42. One crosses over with ease the wide ocean which is the horrible habitation of huge whales; but it is hard to pass over our youth, that is so full of vices and the billows (of our passions). 43. It is very rare to have that happy youth which is fraught with humility, and spent in the company of respectable men; which is distinguished by feelings of sympathy, and is joined with good qualities and virtues.

VITUPERATION OF WOMEN. Ráma added:— What beauty is there in the person of a woman, composed of nerves, bones and joints? She is a mere statue of flesh, and a frame of moving machinery with her ribs and limbs. 2. Can you find any thing beautiful in the female form, separated from its (component parts of the) flesh, skin, blood and water, that is worth beholding? Why then dote upon it? 3. This fairy frame consisting of hairs in one part and blood in the other, cannot engage the attention of a high-minded man to its blemishes. 4. The bodies of females, that are so covered with clothing and repeatedly besmeared with paints and perfumes, are (at last) devoured by carnivorous (beasts and worms). 5. The breasts of women decorated with strings of pearl, appear as charming as the pinnacles of Sumeru, washed by the waters of Ganges falling upon them. 6. Look at these very breasts of the woman becoming at last a lump of food, to be devoured by dogs in cemeteries and on the naked ground. 7. There is no difference between a woman and a young elephant that lives in the jungle, both of them being made of blood, flesh and bones. Then why hunt after her.

8. A woman is charming only for a short time, and does not long last to be so. I look upon her merely as a cause of delusion. 9. There is no difference between wine and a woman, both of them tending equally to produce high-flown mirth and jollity, and creating revelry and lust. 10. Uxorious men are like chained elephants among mankind, that will never come to sense however goaded by the hooks of reason. 11. Women are the flames of vice, their black-dyed eye and hairs are as their smoke and soot. They are as intangible as fire, though pleasing to the sight. They burn the man as fire consumes the straw. 12. They burn from afar (more than fire), and are as dry as bones (in their hearts), though appearing as soft and juicy to sight. They serve as fuel to the fire of hell, and are dangerous with their charmingness. 13. The woman resembles a moon-light night, veiled over by her loosened locks, and looking through her starry eyes. She shows her moon-like face amidst her flowery smiles. 14. Her soft dalliance destroys all manly energy, and her caresses overpower the good sense of men, as the shade of night does the sleeping (world).

15. The woman is as lovely as a creeper in its flowering time. Her palm are the leaves and her eyes as the black-bees (on the flower). Her breasts are as the uplifted tops of the plant. 16. The lovely damsel is like a poisonous creeper, fair as the filament of a flower but destructive of life, by causing inebriation and insensibility. 17. As the snake-catcher entices the snake by his breath and brings it out of its hole, so does the woman allure the man by her officious civilities, and gets him under her control. 18. Concupiscence as a huntsman, has spread his nets in the forms of women, for the purpose of ensnaring the persons of deluded men like silly birds. 19. The mind of man though as fierce <as> that of a furious elephant, is tied fast by the chain of love to the fulcrum of women, just as an elephant is fastened (by his leg) to the post, where he remains dull and dumb for ever. 20. Human life is as a pool in which the mind moves about in its mud and mire (as a fish). Here it is caught by the bait of woman, and dragged along by the thread of its impure desires.

21. The beauteous-eyed damsel is a bondage to man, as the stable is to the horse, the fastening post to the elephant, and as spells are to the snakes. 22. This wondrous world, with all its delights and enjoyments, began with woman and depends on women for its continuance. 23. A woman is the casket of all gems of vice (Pandora’s box), she is the cause of the chain of our everlasting misery, and is of no use to me. 24. What shall I do with her breast, her eyes, her loins, her eyebrows, the substance of which is but flesh, and which therefore is altogether unsubstantial. 25. Here and there, O Bráhman! her flesh and blood and bones undergo a change for the worse in course of a few days. 26. You see sir, those dearly beloved mistresses, who are so much fondled by foolish men, lying at last in the cemetery, and the members of their bodies all mangled and falling off from their places. 27. O Bráhman! those dear objects of love—the faces of damsels, so fondly decorated by their lovers with paints and pastes, are at last to be singed on the piles (by those very hands).

28. Their braided hairs now hang as flappers of chouri on the arbors of the cemetery, and their whitened bones are strewn about as shining stars after a few days. 29. Behold their blood sucked in by the dust of the earth, voracious beasts and worms feeding upon their flesh, jackals tearing their skin, and their vital air wafted in the vacuum. 30. This is the state to which the members of the female body must shortly come to pass, you say all existence to be delusion, tell me therefore why do you allow yourselves to fall into error? 31. A woman is no other than a form composed of the five elements, then why should intelligent men be fondly attached to her (at the risk of their ruin)? 32. Men’s longing for women is likened to the creeper called Suta, which stretches its sprigs to a great length, but bears plenty of bitter and sour fruits. 33. A man blinded by avarice (for the supportance of his mate) is as a stray deer from its herd; and not knowing which way to go, is lost in the maze of illusion.

34. A young man under the control of a young woman, is as much lamentable as an elephant fallen into a pit of the Vindhya mountain in pursuit of his mate. 35. He that has a wife, has an appetite for enjoyment on earth; but one without her has no object of desire. Abandonment of the wife amounts to the abandoning of the world, and forsaking the world is the path to true happiness. 36. I am not content, O Bráhman! with these unmanageable enjoyments which are as flickering as the wings of bees, and are as soon at an end as they are born (like the ephemerids of a day). I long only for the state of supreme bliss, from my fear of repeated-births (transmigration), decay and death.

OBLOQUY OF OLD AGE. Boyhood has scarcely lost its boyishness when it is overtaken by youth, which is soon followed by a ruthless old age, devouring the other two. 2. Old age withers the body like a frost freezing the lake of lilies. It drives away the beauty of the person as a storm does the autumnal clouds; and it pulls down the body, as a current carries away a tree on the bank. 3. The old man with his limbs slackened and worn out by age, and his body weakened by infirmity, is treated by women as a useless beast. 4. Old age drives a man’s good sense, as a good wife is driven away by her step dame. 5. A man in his state of tottering old age, is scoffed at as a dotard by his own sons and servants, and even by his wife, and all his friends and relations. 6. Insatiable avarice like a greedy vulture alights on the heads of the aged, when their appearance grows uncouth, and their bodies become helpless, and devoid of all manly qualities and powers. 7. Appetite the constant companion of my youth, is thriving along with my age, accompanied with her evils of indigence, and heart-burning cares and restlessness.

8. Ah me! what must I do to remove my present and future pains? It is this fear which increases with old age, and finds no remedy. 9. What am I that am brought to this extremity of senselessness, what can I do in this state. I must remain dumb and silent. Under these reflections there is an increased sense of helplessness in old age. 10. How and when and what shall I eat, and what is sweet to taste? These are the thoughts which trouble the mind of one when old age comes upon him. 11. There is an insatiable desire for enjoyments, but the powers to enjoy them are lacking. It is the want of strength which afflicts the heart in old age. 12. Hoary old age sits and shrieks as a heron on the top of the tree of this body, which is infested within it by the serpents of sickness. 13. As the grave owl—the bird of night, appears unexpectedly to our sight soon as the evening shades cover the landscape, so does the solemn appearance of death overtake us in the eve of our life. 14. As darkness prevails over the world at the eve of the day, so doth death overtake the body at the eve of the life.

15. Death overtakes a man in his hoary old age, just as an ape alights on a tree covered with pearly flowers. 16. Even a deserted city, a leafless tree and parched up land may present a fair aspect, but never does the body look well that is pulled down by hoary age. 17. Old age with its hooping cough lays hold on a man, just as a vulture seizes its prey with loud shrieks in order to devour it. 18. As a girl eagerly lays hold on a lotus flower whenever she meets with one, and then plucks it from its stalk and tears it to pieces, so does old age overtake the body of a person and break it down at last. 19. As the chill blast of winter shakes a tree and covers its leaves with dust, so does old age seize the body with a tremor and fill all its limbs with the rust of diseases. 20. The body overtaken by old age becomes as pale and battered, as a lotus flower beaten by frost becomes withered and shattered. 21. As moon-beams contribute to the growth of Kumuda flowers on the top of mountains, so does old age produce grey hairs resembling casla flowers on the heads of men (with inward phlegm and gout).

22. Death the lord of all beings, views the grey head of a man as a ripe pumpkin seasoned with the salt of old age, and devours it with zest. 23. As the Ganges upsets a neighbouring tree by its rapid course, so does old age destroy the body, as the current of our life runs fast to decay. 24. Old age which preys on the flesh of the human body, takes as much delight in devouring its youthful bloom as a cat does in feeding upon a mouse. 25. Decrepitude raises its ominous hoarse sound of hiccough in the body, as the jackal sends forth her hideous cry amidst the forest. 26. Dotage as an inward flame consumes the living body as a wet log of wood, which thereupon emits its hissing sounds of hiccough and hard breathing, and sends up the gloomy fumes of woe and sighs. 27. The body like a flowering creeper, bends down under the pressure of age, turns to grey like the fading leaves of a plant, and becomes as lean and thin as a plant after its flowering time is over. 28. As the infuriate elephant upsets the white plantain tree in a moment, so does old age destroy the body that becomes as white as camphor all over.

29. Senility, O sage! is as the standard bearer of the king of death, flapping his chouri of grey hairs before him, and bringing in his train an army of diseases and troubles. 30. The monster of old age, will even overcome those that were never defeated in wars by their enemies, and those that hide themselves in the inaccessible caverns of mountains. 31. As infants cannot play in a room that has become cold with snow, so the senses can have no play in the body that is stricken with age. 32. Old age like a juggling girl, struts on three legs at the sound of coughing and whiffing, beating as a tymbal on both sides. 33. The tuft of grey hairs on the head of the aged body, represents a white flapper (chouri) fastened to the top of a handle of white sandal wood, to welcome the despot of death. 34. As hoary age makes his advance like moon-light on the site of the body, he calls forth the hidden death to come out of it, as the moon-light makes the nilumbium to unfold its buds. 35. Again as the white wash of old age whitens the outer body, so debility, diseases and dangers become its inmates in the inner apartment.