VICISSITUDES OF TIMES.
Men of little understandings are found to fall into grave errors
in this pit of the world, by their much idle talk, ever doubting
scepticism, and schisms (in religion).
2. Good people can have no more confidence in the net work of their
ribs, than little children may have a liking for fruits reflected in a
mirror.
3. Time is a rat that cuts off the threads of all thoughts (prospects),
which men may entertain here about the contemptible pleasures of this
world.
4. There is nothing in this world which the all-devouring time will
spare. He devours all things as the submarine fire consumes the
over-flowing sea.
5. Time is the sovran lord of all, and equally terrible to all things.
He is ever ready to devour all visible beings.
6. Time as master of all, spares not even the greatest of us for a
moment. He swallows the universe within himself, whence he is known as
the universal soul.
7. Time pervades all things, but has no perceptible feature of his own,
except that he is imperfectly known by the names of years, ages and
_kalpas_ (millenniums).
8. All that was fair and good, and as great as the mount of Meru, have
gone down in the womb of eternity, as the snakes are gorged by the
greedy Garuda.
9. There was no one ever so unkind, hard-hearted, cruel, harsh or
miserly, whom time has not devoured.
10. Time is ever greedy although he should devour the mountains. This
great gourmand is not satiated with gorging every thing in all the
worlds.
11. Time like an actor plays many parts on the stage of the world. He
abstracts and kills, produces and devours and at last destroys every
thing.
12. Time is incessantly picking up the seeds of all the four kinds of
living beings from this unreal world, as a parrot picks up the seeds
from under the cracked shell of a pomegranate. (_Viz._ the ovipari,
vivipari, vegetables and the ephemerids).
13. Time like a wild elephant uproots all proud living beings in this
world, as the other pulls up the trees of the forest with their tusks.
14. This creation of God is like a forest, having Brahmá for its
foundation and its trees full of the great fruits of gods. Time
commands it throughout its length and breadth.
15. Time glides along incessantly as a creeping plant, composed of
years and ages as its parts, and the sable nights as black bees chasing
after them.
16. Time, O sage, is the subtlest of all things. It is divided though
indivisible, it is consumed though incombustible, it is perceived
though imperceptible in its nature.
17. Time like the mind is strong enough to create and demolish any
thing in a trice, and its province is equally extensive with it.
18. Time is a whirlpool to men; and being accompanied with desire
his insatiable and ungovernable mistress and delighting in illicit
enjoyments, he makes them do and undo the same thing over and again.
19. Time is prompted by his rapacity to appropriate every thing to
himself, from the meanest straw, dust, leaves and worms, to the
greatest Indra and the mount Meru itself.
20. Time is the source of all malice and greediness, and the spring of
all misfortunes, and intolerable fluctuations of our states.
21. As boys with their balls play about their play-ground, so does time
in his arena of the sky, play with his two balls of the sun and moon.
22. Time at the expiration of the _kalpa_ age, will dance about with a
long chain of the bones of the dead hanging from his neck to the feet.
23. The gale of desolation rising from the body of this desolator of
the world at the end of a _kalpa_ age, causes the fragments of mount
Meru to fly about in the air like the rinds of the _bhoja-petera_ tree.
24. Time then assumes his terrific form of fire (प्रलयाग्नि), to dissolve the world in empty space, when the gods
Brahmá and Indra and all others cease to exist.
25. As the sea shows himself in a continued series of waves rising and
falling one after another, so it is time that creates and dissolves the
world, and appears to rise and fall in the rotation of days and nights.
26. Time plucks the gods and demigods as ripe fruits, from their great
arbor of existence, at the end of the world (to make them his food).
27. Time resembles a large fig tree (Ficus religiosus), studded with
all the worlds as its fruits, and resonant with the noise of living
beings like the hissing of gnats about them.
28. Time accompanied by Action as his mate, regales himself in the
garden of the world, blossoming with the moon-beams of the Divine
Spirit.
29. As the high and huge rock supports its body upon the basis of the
earth, so does time rest itself in endless and interminable eternity.
30. Time assumes to himself various hues of black, white and red (at
night, day and midday) which serve for his vestures.
31. As the earth is the great support of hills which are fixed upon it,
so is time the support of all the innumerable ponderous worlds that
constitute the universe.
32. Hundreds of great _kalpa_ ages (of the creation and dissolution of
the world) may pass away, yet there is nothing that can move eternity
to pity or concern, or stop or expedite his course. It neither sets nor
rises (as time).
33. Time is never proud to think, that it is he who without the least
sense of pain and labor, brings this world into play and makes it to
exist.
34. Time is like a reservoir in which the nights are as mud, the days
as lotuses, and the clouds as bees.
35. As a covetous man, with worn out broom sticks in hand, sweeps over
a mountain to gather the particles of gold strewn over it, so does time
with his sweeping course of days and nights, collect in one mass of the
dead all living beings in the world.
36. As a miserly man trims and lights a lamp with his own fingers, to
look into his stores at each corner of the room; so does time light the
lamps of the sun and moon to look into the living beings in every nook
and corner of the world.
37. As one ripens the raw fruits in sun and fire in order to devour
them, so does time ripen men by their sun and fire worship, to bring
them under his jaws at last.
38. The world is a dilapidated cottage and men of parts are rare gems
in it. Time hides them in the casket of his belly, as a miser keeps his
treasure in a coffer.
39. Good men are like a chaplet of gems, which time puts on his head
for a time with fondness, and then tears and tramples it down (under
his feet).
40. Strings of days, nights and stars, resembling beads and bracelets
of white and black lotuses, are continually turning round the arm of
time.
41. Time (as a vulture) looks upon the world as (the carcase of) a ram,
with its mountains, seas, sky and earth as its four horns, and the
stars as its drops of blood which it drinks day by day.
42. Time destroys youth as the moon shuts the petals of the lotus. It
destroys life as the lion kills the elephant: there is nothing however
insignificant that time steals not away.
43. Time after sporting for a _Kalpa_ period in the act of killing and
crushing of all living beings, comes to lose its own existence and
becomes extinct in the eternity of the Spirit of spirits.
44. Time after a short rest and respite reappears as the creator,
preserver, destroyer and remembrancer of all. He shows the shapes of
all things whether good or bad, keeping his own nature beyond the
knowledge of all. Thus doth time expand and preserve and finally
dissolve all things by way of sport.