1. Generosity, pleasing
address, courage and propriety of conduct are not
acquired, but are inbred
qualities.
2. He who forsakes his
own community and joins another perishes as the king
3. The elephant has a
huge body but is controlled by the ankusha (goad): yet,
is the goad as large as
the elephant? A lighted candle banishes darkness: is
the candle as vast as
the darkness. A mountain is broken even by a
thunderbolt: is the
thunderbolt therefore as big as the mountain? No, he
whose power prevails is
really mighty; what is there in bulk?
5. He who is engrossed
in family life will never acquire knowledge; there can
be no mercy in the eater
of flesh; the greedy man will not be truthful; and
purity will not be found
in a woman or a hunter.
6. The wicked man will
not attain sanctity even if he is instructed in different
ways, and the Nim tree
will not become sweet even if it is sprinkled from the
top to the roots with
milk and ghee.
7. Mental dirt cannot be
washed away even by one-hundred baths in the
sacred waters, just as a
wine pot cannot be purified even by evaporating all
the wine by fire.
8. It is not strange if
a man reviles a thing of which he has no knowledge, just
as a wild hunter's wife
throws away the pearl that is found in the head of an
elephant, and picks up a
gunj (a type of seed which poor tribals wear as
ornaments).
9. He who for one year
eats his meals silently (inwardly meditating upon the
Lord's prasadam);
attains to the heavenly planets for a thousand crore of
years. ( Note: one crore
equals ten million)
10. The student
(brahmacari) should completely renounce the following eight
things -- his lust,
anger, greed, desire for sweets, sense of decorating the
body, excessive
curiosity, excessive sleep, and excessive endeavour for
bodily maintenance.
12. He alone is a true
brahmana (dvija or "twice-born") who is satisfied with
one meal a day, who has
the six samskaras (or acts of purification such as
garbhadhana, etc.)
performed for him, and who cohabits with his wife only
once in a month on an
auspicious day after her menses.
13. The brahmana who is
engrossed in worldly affairs, brings up cows and is
engaged in trade is
really called a vaishya.
14. The brahmana who
deals in lac-die, articles, oil, indigo, silken cloth,
honey, clarified butter,
liquor, and flesh is called a shudra.
15. The brahmana who
thwarts the doings of others, who is hypocritical,
selfish, and a deceitful
hater, and while speaking mildly cherishes cruelty in
his heart, is called a
cat.
16. The brahmana who
destroys a pond, a well, a tank, a garden and a
temple is called a
mleccha.
17. The brahmana who
steals the property of the Deities and the spiritual
preceptor, who cohabits
with another's wife, and who maintains himself by
eating anything and
everything s called a chandala.
18. The meritorious
should give away in charity all that they have in excess of
their needs. By charity
only Karna, Bali and King Vikramaditya survive even
today. Just see the
plight of the honeybees beating their legs in despair upon
the earth. They are
saying to themselves, "Alas! We neither enjoyed our
stored-up honey nor gave
it in charity, and now someone has taken it from us
in an instant."
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