Reading section 35

9. There was no one ever so unkind, hard-hearted, cruel, harsh or miserly, whom time has not devoured.

10. Time is ever greedy although he should devour the mountains. This great gourmand is not satiated with gorging every thing in all the worlds.

11. Time like an actor plays many parts on the stage of the world. He abstracts and kills, produces and devours and at last destroys every thing.

12. Time is incessantly picking up the seeds of all the four kinds of living beings from this unreal world, as a parrot picks up the seeds from under the cracked shell of a pomegranate. (_Viz._ the ovipari, vivipari, vegetables and the ephemerids).

13. Time like a wild elephant uproots all proud living beings in this world, as the other pulls up the trees of the forest with their tusks.

14. This creation of God is like a forest, having Brahmá for its foundation and its trees full of the great fruits of gods. Time commands it throughout its length and breadth.

15. Time glides along incessantly as a creeping plant, composed of years and ages as its parts, and the sable nights as black bees chasing after them.

16. Time, O sage, is the subtlest of all things. It is divided though indivisible, it is consumed though incombustible, it is perceived though imperceptible in its nature.

17. Time like the mind is strong enough to create and demolish any thing in a trice, and its province is equally extensive with it.

18. Time is a whirlpool to men; and being accompanied with desire his insatiable and ungovernable mistress and delighting in illicit enjoyments, he makes them do and undo the same thing over and again.

19. Time is prompted by his rapacity to appropriate every thing to himself, from the meanest straw, dust, leaves and worms, to the greatest Indra and the mount Meru itself.

20. Time is the source of all malice and greediness, and the spring of all misfortunes, and intolerable fluctuations of our states.

21. As boys with their balls play about their play-ground, so does time in his arena of the sky, play with his two balls of the sun and moon.

22. Time at the expiration of the _kalpa_ age, will dance about with a long chain of the bones of the dead hanging from his neck to the feet.

23. The gale of desolation rising from the body of this desolator of the world at the end of a _kalpa_ age, causes the fragments of mount Meru to fly about in the air like the rinds of the _bhoja-petera_ tree.

24. Time then assumes his terrific form of fire (प्रलयाग्नि), to dissolve the world in empty space, when the gods Brahmá and Indra and all others cease to exist.

25. As the sea shows himself in a continued series of waves rising and falling one after another, so it is time that creates and dissolves the world, and appears to rise and fall in the rotation of days and nights.

26. Time plucks the gods and demigods as ripe fruits, from their great arbor of existence, at the end of the world (to make them his food).

27. Time resembles a large fig tree (Ficus religiosus), studded with all the worlds as its fruits, and resonant with the noise of living beings like the hissing of gnats about them.

28. Time accompanied by Action as his mate, regales himself in the garden of the world, blossoming with the moon-beams of the Divine Spirit.

29. As the high and huge rock supports its body upon the basis of the earth, so does time rest itself in endless and interminable eternity.

30. Time assumes to himself various hues of black, white and red (at night, day and midday) which serve for his vestures.

31. As the earth is the great support of hills which are fixed upon it, so is time the support of all the innumerable ponderous worlds that constitute the universe.

32. Hundreds of great _kalpa_ ages (of the creation and dissolution of the world) may pass away, yet there is nothing that can move eternity to pity or concern, or stop or expedite his course. It neither sets nor rises (as time).

33. Time is never proud to think, that it is he who without the least sense of pain and labor, brings this world into play and makes it to exist.

34. Time is like a reservoir in which the nights are as mud, the days as lotuses, and the clouds as bees.

35. As a covetous man, with worn out broom sticks in hand, sweeps over a mountain to gather the particles of gold strewn over it, so does time with his sweeping course of days and nights, collect in one mass of the dead all living beings in the world.

36. As a miserly man trims and lights a lamp with his own fingers, to look into his stores at each corner of the room; so does time light the lamps of the sun and moon to look into the living beings in every nook and corner of the world.

37. As one ripens the raw fruits in sun and fire in order to devour them, so does time ripen men by their sun and fire worship, to bring them under his jaws at last.

38. The world is a dilapidated cottage and men of parts are rare gems in it. Time hides them in the casket of his belly, as a miser keeps his treasure in a coffer.

39. Good men are like a chaplet of gems, which time puts on his head for a time with fondness, and then tears and tramples it down (under his feet).

40. Strings of days, nights and stars, resembling beads and bracelets of white and black lotuses, are continually turning round the arm of time.

41. Time (as a vulture) looks upon the world as (the carcase of) a ram, with its mountains, seas, sky and earth as its four horns, and the stars as its drops of blood which it drinks day by day.

42. Time destroys youth as the moon shuts the petals of the lotus. It destroys life as the lion kills the elephant: there is nothing however insignificant that time steals not away.

43. Time after sporting for a _Kalpa_ period in the act of killing and crushing of all living beings, comes to lose its own existence and becomes extinct in the eternity of the Spirit of spirits.

44. Time after a short rest and respite reappears as the creator, preserver, destroyer and remembrancer of all. He shows the shapes of all things whether good or bad, keeping his own nature beyond the knowledge of all. Thus doth time expand and preserve and finally dissolve all things by way of sport.

CHAPTER XXIV.

RAVAGES OF TIME.

Ráma rejoined:—Time is a self-willed sportsman as a prince, who is inaccessible to dangers and whose powers are unlimited.

2. This world is as it were a forest and sporting ground of time, wherein the poor deluded worldlings are caught in his snare like a body of wounded stags.

3. The ocean of universal deluge is a pleasure-pond of time, and the submarine fires bursting therein as lotus flowers (serve to beautify that dismal scene).

4. Time makes his breakfast of this vapid and stale earth, flavoured with the milk and curd of the seas of those names.

5. His wife _Chandi_ (Hecate) with her train of _Mátris_ (furies), ranges all about this wide world as a ferocious tigress (with horrid devastation).

6. The earth with her waters is like a bowl of wine in the hand of time, dressed and flavoured with all sorts of lilies and lotuses.

7. The lion with his huge body and startling mane, his loud roaring and tremendous groans, seems as a caged bird of sport in the hand of time.

8. The Mahákála like a playful young _Kokila_ (cuckoo), appears in the figure of the blue autumnal sky, and warbling as sweet as the notes of a lute of gourd (in the music of the spheres).

9. The restless bow of death is found flinging its woeful arrows (darts of death) with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides.

10. This world is like a forest, wherein sorrows are ranging about as playful apes, and time like a sportive prince in this forest, is now roving, now walking, now playing and now killing his games.

CHAPTER XXV.

SPORTS OF DEATH.

Time stands the foremost of all deceitful players in this world. He acts the double parts of creation and destruction, and of action and fate (utility and fatality).

2. Time has no other character but those of action and motion by which his existence is known to us, and which bind all beings (in the succession of thoughts and acts).

3. Fate is that which frustrates (the necessary consequences of) the acts of all created beings, as the solar heat serves to dissolve the conglomeration of snows.

4. This wide world is the stage wherein the giddy mob dance about (in their appointed times).

5. Time has a third name of a terrifying nature known as _Kritántah_ (Fate), who in the form of a Kápálika (one holding human skulls in his hand), dances about in the world.

6. This dancing and loving Kritántah (Fate), is accompanied by his consort called Destiny to whom he is greatly attached (as his colleague).

7. Time (as Siva), wears on his bosom of the world, the triplicate white and holy thread composed of the serpent named Ananta and the stream of Ganges, and the digit of the moon on his forehead (to measure his course). (_Viz_:—the Zodiacal belt; the milky way, and the lunar mansions).

8. The sun and the moon are the golden armlets of time, who holds in his palm the mundane world as the paltry plaything of a nosegay.

9. The firmament with its stars appears like a garment with coloured spots in it; the clouds called _Pushkara_ and _Avarta_ are as the skirts of that garment, which are washed by Time in the waters of the universal deluge.

10. Before him, dances his beloved Destiny with all her arts for ever, to beguile the living that are fond of worldly enjoyments.