CHAPTER XXX.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
79. See how it is worried by its being hushed to and fro, in the alternate swinging beds of prosperity and adversity; and see how it is plunged in the deep and muddy puddle of misery, like a worn out elephant sinking in the mire.
80. Look at this deep and unfordable ocean of the world, all hollow within and rolling with the eventful waves of casualties; it emits the submarine fire from within its bosom, as the human heart flashes forth with its hidden fire of passions and affections.
81. Human heart staggers between hope and fear, like a stray deer in the forest; and is alternately cheered and depressed at the prospects of affluence and want.
82. The mind that is led by its desire, is always apprehensive of disappointment; and it coils back for fear of a reverse, as a timorous girl flies afar from the sight of a spectre.
83. Man encounters all pains for a certain pleasure in prospect, as the camel browses the thorny furze in expectation of honey at a honey comb in it; but happening to slip from his intermediate standpoint, he is hurled headlong to the bottom.
84. One meeting with a reverse falls from one danger to another; and so he meets with fresh calamities, as if one evil invited or was the harbinger of the other.
85. The mind that is captivated by its desires, and led onward by its exertions, meets with one difficulty after another, and has cause to repent and grieve at every step (or is the cause of remorse and grief). (All toil and moil, tend to the vexation of the spirit).
86. As a man advances in life, so he improves in his learning; but alas! all his worldly knowledge serves at best, but to bind down the soul fast to the earth.
87. Cowards are in constant fear of everything, until they die away in their fear; as the little shrimp being afraid of the waterfall, falls on dry land, and there perishes with flouncing.
88. The helplessness of childhood, the anxieties of manhood, the miserableness of old age; are preliminaries to the sad demise of men engaged in busy life. (The last catastrophe of human life).
89. The propensities of past life cause some to be born as celestial nymphs in heaven, and others as venomous serpents in subterranean cells; while some become as fierce demons, and many are reborn as men and women on earth.
90. The past actions of men make to be born again as Rákshas among savages, and others as monkeys in forests; while some become as Kinnaras on mountains, and many as lions on mountain tops. (All these are depraved races of men viz; the anthropophagi cannibals, the pigmy apes—banars, the ugly mountaneers Kinnaras and the leonine men narasinhas).
91. The Vidyádharas of the Devagiri mountains, and the Nagas of the forest caves (are degenerations of men); and so are the fowls of air, the quadrupeds of wood lands, the trees and plants of forests, and the bushes on hills and orchides on trees; (are all but transformation of the perverted intellect).
92. It is self same intellect which causes Náráyana to float on the surface of the sea, and makes the lotus born Brahmá to remain in his meditation; It keeps Hara in the company of his consort Uma, and places Hari over the gods in heaven.
93. It is this which makes the sun to make the day and the clouds to give the rain (or pour in rains); It makes the sea to breathe out in waves, and the volcanic mountains to blow out in fire and flame.
94. It makes the curricle of time to revolve continually in the circle of the seasons; and causes the day and night to rotate in their cycles of light and darkness.
95. Here it causes the seeds to vegetate with the juice contained in them; and there it makes the stones and minerals lie down in mute silence.
96. Some times it blooms in fruits ripened by the solar heat, and at others maturated by the burning fuel; some where it gives us the cold and icy water; and at others the spring water which cannot be lasted.
97. Here it glows in luminous bodies, and there it shows itself of impenetrable thickets and in accessible rocks; It shines as bright and white in one place, and is as dark and blue in another; It sparkles in the fire and dwindles in the earth, it blows in the air and spreads in the water.
98. Being the all-pervading, omnipresent and omnipotent power itself, it is the one in all and the whole plenum. It is therefore more subtile and transparent, than the rarefied and translucent air.
99. As the intellect spreads out and contracts itself, in any manner in any place or time; so it conceives and produces the same within and without itself, as the agitation of waters produces both the little billows and huge surges of the sea. (The intellect is the immanent cause of all phenomena).
100. The intellect stretches itself in the various forms of ducks and geese, of cranes and crows, of storks, wolves and horses also; it becomes the heron and partridge, the parrot, the dog, the stag, the ape and Kinnara likewise.
101. It is the abstract quality of the understanding, beauty and modesty, and of love and affections also; it is the power of illusion and the shadow and brightness of night and of moonlight likewise.
102. It stretches itself in these and all other forms of bodies, and is born and reborn in all kinds and species of things. It roves and rolls all about the revolving world, in the manner of a straw whirling in a whirlpool.
103. It is afraid of its own desires, as the she-ass is seen to shudder at its own brayings; and it has no one like itself. ([Sanskrit: mugva bálá-calá-valá]).
104. I have told you already, O great sage! how this principle of the living spirit, becomes vitiated by its animal propensities, and is afterwards debased to the nature and condition of brute creatures.
105. The supreme soul receiving the appellation of the living soul or principle of action, becomes a pitiable object, when it becomes subject to error and illusion, and is subjected to endless pains and miseries.
106. The deluded soul is then overpowered by its connate sin, which causes it to choose the wrong unreality—asat for itself, which being frail and perishable, makes the active soul to perish with itself. (This passage appears to allude to the original sin of man, which became the cause of the death and woes of human life. The connate sin is compared to the husk which is born with the rice, and not coming from without. It is otherwise called the inborn sinfulness or frailty of human nature—Man is to err &c.).
107. The soul being thus degraded from its state of endless felicity, to the miserable condition of mortal life, laments over its fallen state, as a widow wails over her fate.
108. Look on the deplorable condition of intellect—chit; which having forgotten its original state (of purity), is subjected to the impotent Ignorance, which has been casting it to the miseries of degradation, as they cast a bucket in the well by a string, which lowers it lower and lower till it sinks in the bottom of the pit. (This string araghatta is said to be the action of human life, which the more it is lengthened, the more it tends to our degradation, unless we prevent by our good action. So the sruti! [Sanskrit: yathákárí yatháchárí tathá bhalati | sághukárí sádhurbhabati | prápakárí papíbhavati | punyo bai punyema karmmana bhavati | pápah pápereti]).