Reading section 33

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.

CHAPTER XXI.

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.