VITUPERATION OF RICHES.
Ráma said:—It is opulence, Oh sage! that is reckoned a blessing here;
it is even she that is the cause of our troubles and errors.
2. She bears away as a river in the rainy season, all high-spirited
simpletons overpowered by its current.
3. Her daughters are anxieties fostered by many a malpractice, like the
waves of a stream raised by the winds.
4. She can never stand steady on her legs any where, but like a
wretched woman who has burnt her feet, she limps from one place to
another.
5. Fortune like a lamp both burns and blackens its possessor, until it
is extinguished by its own inflammation.
6. She is unapproachable as princes and fools, and likewise as
favourable as they to her adherents, without scanning their merits or
faults.
7. She begets only evils in them by their various acts (of profligacy),
as good milk given to serpents, serves but to increase the poignancy of
their poison.
8. Men (by nature) are gentle and kind hearted to friends and
strangers, until they are hardheartened by their riches, which like
blasts of wind, serve to stiffen (the liquid) frost.
9. As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave,
the grateful, the mild and gentle, corrupted by riches.
10. Riches do not conduce to one’s happiness, but redound to his woe
and destruction, as the plant aconite when fostered, hides in itself
the fatal poison.
11. A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a
master wanting partiality, are the three rarities on earth.
12. The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cavern of a dragon, and
as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of the _Vindhyá_ mountain
inhabited by fierce elephants.
13. Riches like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of
men, and like moon-beams brings to bloom the buds of their misery.
They blow away the brightness of a fair prospect as a hurricane, and
resemble a sea with huge surges (of disquiet).
14. They bring upon us a cloud of fear and error, increase the poison
of despondence and regret, and are like the dreadful snakes in the
field of our choice.
15. Fortune is (as a killing) frost to the bondsmen of asceticism,
and as the night to the owls of libertinism; she is an eclipse to the
moonlight of reason, and as moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of
folly.
16. She is as transitory as the Iris, and alike pleasant to view by
the play of her colours; she is as fickle as the lightening, which
vanishes no sooner it appears to sight. Hence none but the ignorant
have reliance in her.
17. She is as unsteady as a well born damsel following a base-born man
to the words; and like a (deceptive) mirage that tempts the run-aways
to fall to it as the doe.
18. Unsteady as the wave, she is never steady in any place; (but is
ever wavering to all sides) like the flickering flame of a lamp. So her
leaning is known to nobody.
19. She like the lioness is ever prompt in fighting, and like the
leader of elephants favourable to her partizans. She is as sharp as the
blade of a sword (to cut off all obstacles), and is the patroness of
sharp-witted sharpers.
20. I see no felicity in uncivil prosperity, which is full of
treachery, and replete with every kind of danger and trouble.
21. It is pity that prosperity, like a shameless wench will again lay
hold on a man, after being abandoned by him in his association with
(her rival) Poverty.
22. What is she with all her loveliness and attraction of human
hearts, but momentary thing obtained by all manner of evil means, and
resembling at best a flower shrub, growing out of a cave inhabited by a
snake, and beset by reptiles all about its stem.