VITUPERATION OF WOMEN.
Ráma added:—
What beauty is there in the person of a woman, composed of nerves,
bones and joints? She is a mere statue of flesh, and a frame of moving
machinery with her ribs and limbs.
2. Can you find any thing beautiful in the female form, separated from
its (component parts of the) flesh, skin, blood and water, that is
worth beholding? Why then dote upon it?
3. This fairy frame consisting of hairs in one part and blood in
the other, cannot engage the attention of a high-minded man to its
blemishes.
4. The bodies of females, that are so covered with clothing and
repeatedly besmeared with paints and perfumes, are (at last) devoured
by carnivorous (beasts and worms).
5. The breasts of women decorated with strings of pearl, appear as
charming as the pinnacles of Sumeru, washed by the waters of Ganges
falling upon them.
6. Look at these very breasts of the woman becoming at last a lump of
food, to be devoured by dogs in cemeteries and on the naked ground.
7. There is no difference between a woman and a young elephant that
lives in the jungle, both of them being made of blood, flesh and bones.
Then why hunt after her.
8. A woman is charming only for a short time, and does not long last to
be so. I look upon her merely as a cause of delusion.
9. There is no difference between wine and a woman, both of them
tending equally to produce high-flown mirth and jollity, and creating
revelry and lust.
10. Uxorious men are like chained elephants among mankind, that will
never come to sense however goaded by the hooks of reason.
11. Women are the flames of vice, their black-dyed eye and hairs are as
their smoke and soot. They are as intangible as fire, though pleasing
to the sight. They burn the man as fire consumes the straw.
12. They burn from afar (more than fire), and are as dry as bones (in
their hearts), though appearing as soft and juicy to sight. They serve
as fuel to the fire of hell, and are dangerous with their charmingness.
13. The woman resembles a moon-light night, veiled over by her loosened
locks, and looking through her starry eyes. She shows her moon-like
face amidst her flowery smiles.
14. Her soft dalliance destroys all manly energy, and her caresses
overpower the good sense of men, as the shade of night does the
sleeping (world).
15. The woman is as lovely as a creeper in its flowering time. Her palm
are the leaves and her eyes as the black-bees (on the flower). Her
breasts are as the uplifted tops of the plant.
16. The lovely damsel is like a poisonous creeper, fair as the filament
of a flower but destructive of life, by causing inebriation and
insensibility.
17. As the snake-catcher entices the snake by his breath and brings
it out of its hole, so does the woman allure the man by her officious
civilities, and gets him under her control.
18. Concupiscence as a huntsman, has spread his nets in the forms of
women, for the purpose of ensnaring the persons of deluded men like
silly birds.
19. The mind of man though as fierce <as> that of a furious elephant,
is tied fast by the chain of love to the fulcrum of women, just as an
elephant is fastened (by his leg) to the post, where he remains dull
and dumb for ever.
20. Human life is as a pool in which the mind moves about in its mud
and mire (as a fish). Here it is caught by the bait of woman, and
dragged along by the thread of its impure desires.
21. The beauteous-eyed damsel is a bondage to man, as the stable is to
the horse, the fastening post to the elephant, and as spells are to the
snakes.
22. This wondrous world, with all its delights and enjoyments, began
with woman and depends on women for its continuance.
23. A woman is the casket of all gems of vice (Pandora’s box), she is
the cause of the chain of our everlasting misery, and is of no use to
me.
24. What shall I do with her breast, her eyes, her loins, her eyebrows,
the substance of which is but flesh, and which therefore is altogether
unsubstantial.
25. Here and there, O Bráhman! her flesh and blood and bones undergo a
change for the worse in course of a few days.
26. You see sir, those dearly beloved mistresses, who are so much
fondled by foolish men, lying at last in the cemetery, and the members
of their bodies all mangled and falling off from their places.
27. O Bráhman! those dear objects of love—the faces of damsels, so
fondly decorated by their lovers with paints and pastes, are at last to
be singed on the piles (by those very hands).
28. Their braided hairs now hang as flappers of _chouri_ on the arbors
of the cemetery, and their whitened bones are strewn about as shining
stars after a few days.
29. Behold their blood sucked in by the dust of the earth, voracious
beasts and worms feeding upon their flesh, jackals tearing their skin,
and their vital air wafted in the vacuum.
30. This is the state to which the members of the female body must
shortly come to pass, you say all existence to be delusion, tell me
therefore why do you allow yourselves to fall into error?
31. A woman is no other than a form composed of the five elements, then
why should intelligent men be fondly attached to her (at the risk of
their ruin)?
32. Men’s longing for women is likened to the creeper called Suta,
which stretches its sprigs to a great length, but bears plenty of
bitter and sour fruits.
33. A man blinded by avarice (for the supportance of his mate) is as a
stray deer from its herd; and not knowing which way to go, is lost in
the maze of illusion.
34. A young man under the control of a young woman, is as much
lamentable as an elephant fallen into a pit of the Vindhya mountain in
pursuit of his mate.
35. He that has a wife, has an appetite for enjoyment on earth; but one
without her has no object of desire. Abandonment of the wife amounts
to the abandoning of the world, and forsaking the world is the path to
true happiness.
36. I am not content, O Bráhman! with these unmanageable enjoyments
which are as flickering as the wings of bees, and are as soon at an
end as they are born (like the ephemerids of a day). I long only
for the state of supreme bliss, from my fear of repeated-births
(transmigration), decay and death.