THE PRINCE'S ABJURATION OF HIS ASCETICISM.
Argument.--The prince coming to his sense, took all his relics of
asceticism and set them on fire.
Chúdálá continued:--Tell me prince, what made you decline to accept the
advice of the princess _Chúdálá_, who is equally skilled in morality,
as well as in Divine knowledge.
2. She is an adept among the knowers of truth, and actually practices
all what she preaches to others; her words are the dictates of truth,
and deserved to be received with due deference.
3. If you rejected her advice, by your over confidence in your own
judgment; yet let me know, why she prevented you not, from parting with
your all to others. (There is a proverb that men should rely on their
own judgment and that of their elders; but never on those of other
people and women).
4. Sikhidhwaja replied:--But I ask you another question, and hope you
will reply to it, _i.e._ how do you say that I have not relinquished my
all, when I have resigned my realm, my habitation and my country all
together; and when I left my wife and all my wealth behind.
5. Chúdálá replied:--You say truly O prince! that you have forsaken
your kingdom and habitation, and your lands and relatives, and even
your wife and wealth, but that does not make your relinquishment of
all, since none of these truly belong to thee; they come of themselves
and go away from man; it is your egoism only which is yours, and which
you have not yet got rid of.
6. You have not yet abandoned your egoism, which is the greatest
delight of your soul; you cannot get rid of your sorrows, until you are
quite freed from your egoistic feelings.
7. Sikhidhwaja said:--If you say that my kingdom and possession, were
not my all, and that this forest which I have resorted to forms my
all at present; and these rocks and trees and shrubs form my present
possessions, then I am willing to quit all these even, if that would
constitute resignation of all.
8. Vasishtha said:--Hearing these words of the Bráhman boy--Kumbha, the
cold blooded prince Sikhidhwaja held silence for a while, and returned
no answer.
9. He wiped off his attachment to the forest from his heart, and made
up his mind to slide away from it; as the current of a stream in the
rainy weather, glides along and carries down the dust and dirt of the
beach.
10. Sikhidhwaja said:--Now sir, I am resolved to leave this forest,
and bid adieu to all its caves and arbours; say now does not this
relinquishment of all, form my absolute abnegation of all things.
11. Kumbha replied:--The foot of this mountain with all its wood-lands,
arbours and caverns are no properties of yours, but the common fells
and dales of all; how then can your forsaking of them, form your
self-abnegation at all?
12. The best boon of your egoism which has fallen to your lot, is still
unforsaken by you; you must get rid of this, in order to be freed from
the cares and sorrows of this sublunary world of woes.
13. If none of these things is mine, then my hermit's cell and grove,
which I own as mine are what I am willing to resign, if that would make
my total abnegation.
14. Vasishtha said:--The self-governed Sikhidhwaja being awaked to his
sense, by these admonitions of Kumbha--the Bráhman boy; he remained
silent for a moment, with the light that shone within him.
15. His pure conscience returned to his mind, and the blaze of his
right knowledge, burnt away the dross of his attachment to the
hermitage; as a gust of wind drives the dusts from the ground.
16. Sikhidhwaja said:--Know me sir, to have now taken away my heart
from this hermitage, and forsaken my attachment to all its sacred
bowers and arbours; now therefore consider me to have resigned my all
and every thing in world.
17. Kumbha replied:--How can I consider you as fully resigned, by your
resigning these groves and arbours and everything appertaining to them;
none of which belong to you, nor are you their master or deserter in
anyway. (Know there is but one being, who is the sole master of all).
18. Thou hast another thing to be forsaken by thee, and that is the
greatest and best thing that has fallen to thy lot in this world; it
must be by your resignation of that thing, that you can set yourself
free from all. (The prince was so very infatuated with his knowledge
of the gross sensibles, that he would never come to know what egoism
meant).
19. Sikhidhwaja said:--If this even be not the all that I have, and
which you want me to resign; then take these earthen pots and basins,
these hides and skins and this my cell also, and know me to forgo all
these forever and betake myself elsewhere.
20. Vasishtha said:--So saying the dispassionate prince rose from his
seat, with his composed and quiet mind; as when an autumnal cloud rises
on the top of a mountain, and disperses elsewhere.
21. Kumbha saw from his seat, the motions and movements of the prince,
with her smiles and amazement, as when the sun laughs from above, to
see the foolish attempts of men on the earth below.
22. Kumbha looked steadfastly on Sikhidhwaja, and sat silently with the
thought, "Ah! let him do whatever he likes for his sanctification and
renunciation of the temporal articles of this world, which do not serve
for his spiritual edification at all."
23. Sikhidhwaja then brought out all his sacred vessels and seats from
his grotto, and collected them all in one spot; as the great ocean
yielded up all her submerged treasures, after the diluvian flood was
over.
24. Having collecting them in a pile, he set fire to them with dried
fuel; as the sun-stone or sun-glass burns down the combustible by its
fire.
25. The sacred vessels and chattels which were set on fire and burnt
down by it, were left behind by the prince who sat on a seat beside
Kumbha; as the sun sets on the mount Meru, after he had burnt down in
the world by the fire of dissolution.
26. He said to his rosary, you have been confident to me your master,
as long as I turn you on my fingers as my counting beads.
27. And though I have turned you over and over, with my sacred mantras
in this forests; yet you have been of no service to me at all.
28. And though I have travelled with you, Oh my reliquary! and seen
many holy places in thy company; but as you proved of no good to me, I
now resign you to the flames.
29. The burning fire rose in flames and flashes in the sky, and they
appeared as stars glittering in it; he then cast his seat of the deer's
skin on the fire, and said: I have borne you about me so long on my
back as an ignorant stag.
30. It was by my ignorance, that I held you so long with me; and now
you are at liberty to go your own way; where may peace and bliss attend
on you forever.
31. Ascend with the rising fire to heaven, and twinkle there as the
stars on high; so saying he took off his hide garment from his body
with his hands, and committed it to the flames.
32. The funeral pyre of the prince spread as a sea of fire and it
was driven about as a conflagration by the winds blowing from the
mountains; when the prince thought of throwing his water pot also into
the fire.
33. And said to it, you sir, that bore the sacred water for all my
sacerdotal functions; O my good water pot, it is true that I have not
the power of rendering the proper recompense of your past services.
34. You were the best model of true friendship, good nature,
benevolence and constancy to me; and the best exemplar of goodness and
all good qualities in thy great bounty.
35. O thou! (my water pot), that wast the receptacle of all goodness to
me; now depart your own way, by your purification in the same sacred
fire, as thou wast at first found by me (from the potter's fire). Be
thy ways all blissful to thee! so saying he cast his water pot into the
consecrated fire.
36. Because all good things are to be given to the good or to the fire;
but all bad things are cast off, like the dust of the earth; and as
foolish men fall to the ground, by their secret craft.
37. It is well for thee, my low mattress, to be put to fire and reduced
to worthless ashes; so saying, he took up his wet matted seat, and cast
it into the flaming fire.
38. The seat on which he used to sit in his pure meditation on God
(_i.e._ his _kusásana_ or his seat made of kusa-grass), he soon
committed to the flames; because it is better to give up a thing
betimes, of which one must get rid shortly afterwards.
39. This my alms-pot which contained the best articles of food, which
were presented to me by good people; I now commit to this flame with
whatever it has in it.
40. The fire burns a thing but once, and the burnt article ceases to
burn any more; hence I shun all the implements to my ceremonial rites,
in order to set me free from the bondage of all actions for ever more.
41. Be ye not sorry therefore, that I forsake you thus; for who is
there, that will bear about him things that are unworthy of himself.
42. So saying, he threw into the fire all his cooking vessels, and the
plates and dishes of his kitchen; and all things whatever he had need
of in his hermitage. And these began to burn in a blaze, us the world
was burnt down by the all destructive fire of the kalpánta.