INTERROGATORIES OF VETÁLA.
Arguments:--Conversation of a prince and a Vetála, and Dissipation of
Error and manifestation of truth.
Vasishtha resumed:--Life becomes no life (becomes immortal), and the
mind turns to no mind, immerges in the soul; no sooner is the cloud of
ignorance dispersed by the bright sun beams of right reason. This is
the state which is termed _moksha_ or liberation (from error) by the
wise.
2. The mind and its egoism and tuism (subjectivity and objectivity),
appear as water in the mirage, but all these unrealities vanish away,
no sooner we come to our right reason;
3. Attend now to the queries of a vetála, which I come to remember
at present, concerning our erroneous and dreaming conception of the
phenomenal world, and which will serve to example by the subject of our
last lecture.
4. There lived a gigantic vetála in the vast wilderness of the Vindhya
mountains, who happened to come out on an excursion to the adjoining
districts in search of his prey of human beings.
5. He used to live before in the neighbourhood of a populous city,
where he lived quite happy and well satisfied with the victims; which
were daily offered to him by the good citizens.
6. He never killed a human being without some cause or harm, although
he roved through the city, pinched by hunger and thirst. He walked in
the ways of the honest and equitable men in the place.
7. It came to pass in course of time that he went out of the city, to
reside in his woody retreat; where he never killed any man, except when
pressed by excessive hunger, and when he thought it was equitable for
him to do so.
8. He happened to meet there once a ruler of the land, strolling about
in his nightly round; to whom he cried out in a loud and appalling
voice.
9. The vetála exclaimed:--Where goest thou, O prince, said he, thou art
now caught in the clutches of a hideous monster, thou art now a dead
man, and hast become my ration of this day.
10. The ruler replied:--Beware, O nocturnal fiend! that I will break
thy skull into a thousand pieces, if you will unjustly attempt to kill
me by force at this spot, and make thy ration of me.
11. The vetála rejoined:--I do not tell thee unjustly, and speak it
rightly unto thee; that as thou art a ruler, it is thy duty to attend
to the petition of every body (wherein if thou failest, thou surely
diest before me).
12. I request thee, O prince! to solve the questions that I propose
to thee; because I believe thou art best able to give a full and
satisfactory answer to every one of them. (These questions are dark
enigmas, which are explained in the next chapter).
13. Who is that glorious sun, the particles of whose rays, are seen to
glitter in the surrounding worlds: and what is that wind (or force),
which wafts these dusts of stars, in the infinite space of vacuum.
14. What is that self-same thing, which passes from one dream to
another, and assumes different forms by hundreds and thousands, and yet
does not forsake its original form.
15. Tell me what is that pithy particle in bodies, which is enveloped
under a hundred folds or sheaths, which are laid over and under one
another, like the coats or lamina of a plantain tree.
16. What is that minute atom which is imperceptible to the eye, and yet
produces this immeasurable universe, with its stupendous worlds and
skies, and the prodigious planets on high and mountains below, which
are the minutest of that minute particle.
17. What is that shapeless and formless thing atom, which remains as
the pith and marrow under the rocks of huge mountains, and which is the
substratum of the triple world (of heaven, earth and infernal regions).
18. If you, O wicked soul, fail to answer to these queries, then shalt
thou be a killer of thyself, by your being made my food this moment.
And know that at the end, I will devour all thy people, as the regent
of death destroys every body in the world.