Arjuna and the Hunter 2

English (machine translation) 2

Language: English

2.1

Then Vṛkodara, having judged the weight / of the words spoken by his beloved, pleasing to the mind, / spoke to the king words / based on reasoning and grounded in strength:

2.2

What that proud woman spoke, looking all around / with an eye full of affection, / could arouse astonishment / even in the lord of speech, for whom it would be hard to utter.

2.3

Even difficult statecraft is entered / when a ford is made, like a body of water; / but rare indeed in this world is someone / who points out the true course of action.

2.4

In this speech, painful to those whose energy is impaired, / yet weighty and happy in its outcome, / great virtue is seen, though it is brief, / like a very potent medicine.

2.5

May this speech of radiant meaning / be pleasing to you for the sake of the desired good; / surely the wise are indifferent to the person of the speaker / and appreciate only the merit in the words.

2.6

O king, your discriminating intellect / has achieved mastery in all four sciences; / having met with reverse, how does it sink down / like a cow elephant into the mire?

2.7

What could be more distressing than this: / that when you have been reduced by foes to this censured state, / your manly effort, whose course was respected even by the gods, / should sink down?

The rise of enemies, heavy and leading to evil ends, / is easily endured by a wise man; / but a decline, even if great, that inclines toward an abundance of fruit / is not to be endured by one desiring prosperity.

2.9

Recognizing that the greater decline of the enemy will soon occur / and that his own is the opposite, / a resolute man overlooks his own state of loss; / otherwise, he applies a remedy.

2.10

When kings, through lack of exertion, / do not protect their royal power against the rising power of foes, / their royal fortunes soon depart from them, / as if out of fear of public reproach.

2.11

To a king who, even in decline, maintains the innate majesty / that is auspicious for prosperity, / and rises without downfall, the subjects bow down, / as to the crescent moon of the first day.

2.12

Statecraft, which decides the five elements of counsel, / is indeed the source of treasury and army; / it attains skill in matters that must be executed, / just as people conform to destiny.

2.13

For a proud, high-minded man / who desires to climb to a dear, exalted position, / his own manly effort is deemed the support / capable of turning back a downfall.

2.14

Misfortunes overcome one who is devoid of valor; / future consequence abandons one beset by misfortune; / insignificance is certain for one without future consequence; / and the ignoble is no vessel for royal fortune.

2.15

Therefore, enough of clinging to the sterility of resolve, / which is the enemy of elevation! / Prosperities dependent on prowess / do not dwell together with despondency.

2.16

Now, if the end of the term is awaited, / how could the royal fortunes, having been tasted for a long time, / be easily abandoned / by Dhṛtarāṣṭra's son, who has displayed crooked conduct?

2.17

Or if your own station must be regained / only by what the enemy grants, / O lord of men, what purpose is served by the arms of your younger brothers, / who have manifested manly effort?

2.18

The king of beasts subsists on elephants / whose faces are wet with rut, slain by himself; / belittling the world with his fiery splendor, / the great one surely does not desire prosperity from another.

2.19

For one whose wealth is pride, who wishes to accumulate / enduring fame with transient breaths of life, / fortune, fickle as the play of lightning, / is surely only an incidental fruit.

2.20

People do not tread upon a blazing fire, / but they do tread upon a heap of ashes; / therefore, out of fear of humiliation, proud men / willingly give up their lives, but not their fiery splendor.

2.21

Looking to what reward does the king of beasts / attack the thundering clouds? / That is truly the nature of the great, / by which he does not tolerate the exaltation of another.

2.22

Therefore, O king, shaking off the darkness born of negligence, / set your mind on valor alone; / know this for certain: the misfortunes of your enemies / have been prevented by your lack of enterprise.

2.23

Like the guardian elephants of the quarters, / like the four vast oceans, / who among the enemies could withstand in battle / your younger brothers, possessing the fiery energy of Indra?

2.24

May the inauspicious stream of tears from the eyes of your enemies' wives / bring peace to the blazing fire ignited perpetually in your heart by the foe.

2.25

Thus, to soothe the son of the wind, who had shown such agitation / and whose mind was possessed by anger, the king set to work as if towards a rogue elephant.

2.26

Free from confusion, pure, charming to the heart, an abode of auspiciousness, / your intellect is seen spotless in the expanse of your words, as if in a mirror.

2.27

Clarity was not cast away by the words, nor was weight of meaning neglected; / distinctness of sense was wrought in the phrases, yet coherence was nowhere discarded.

2.28

Reasoning was adduced with force, nor was sacred tradition violated by inference; / who, with a mind unlike yours, would dare to speak with such compelling power?

2.29

Even so, through lack of contentment, my heart hastens only toward a firm resolve; / for great riches of speech are not able to bring things easily to an end where deeds are required.

2.30

One should not perform an action rashly; lack of discrimination is the ultimate seat of calamities. / For fortunes, greedy for virtues, choose of their own accord the one who acts with circumspection.

2.31

He who, nurturing the seeds of proper action, showers them with the water of discrimination, / dwells ever in fruitful action, as mankind dwells in autumn [bringing harvest].

2.32

Pure sacred learning adorns a person's body; tranquility becomes its ornament; / valour is the ornament of tranquility; and that valour has for its ornament the success brought about by statecraft.

2.33

When the difficult course of duty is obscured by the darkness of conflicting views, / the well-practised, spotless sacred tradition reveals the purpose to the discerning, like a lamp.

2.34

For those directing their mind upon the path trodden by great souls of enviable virtues, / even a downfall caused by destiny, without fault of theirs, is equal to elevation.

2.35

Desiring victory and having conquered the rush of wrath, / [princes] exercise manly effort, taking into account what is auspicious, expedient, productive of great fruit, and of unblemished future.

2.36

He who desires to rise must first dispel with his intellect the darkness of wrath; / not even the sun rises with brilliance without first breaking through the darkness wrought by the night.

2.37

Though powerful, he who does not check the overpower of darkness born of anger / destroys all the riches of his power, like the waning fortnight destroying the digits of the moon.

2.38

The lord of the earth who is impartial, assumes gentleness, and exerts sharpness at the proper time, / presides over the world with his splendour like the sun.

2.39

Where is the lasting possession of royal fortunes, and where subjection to the rogue horses of the senses? / For royal fortunes, fleeting as autumn clouds and full of deception, are difficult to protect by those with fickle senses.

2.40

Why should you, who have surpassed the lord of waters in firmness, / display an unseasonable agitation of mind that has gained such momentum?

2.41

Those who, even after acquiring sacred learning, have not disciplined the enemies born of the body, / indeed soon engender for their fortunes infamy that has fickleness as its resort.

2.42

Impatience, which wastes the means of timely action and tortures the host of one's own bodily senses, / ought not to divert you, like an ordinary person, from success in statecraft.

2.43

There is no means equal to forbearance—which greatly aids the future, / produces abundant fruit of action, and is an infallible destroyer of enemies.

2.44

Leaving us who are inclined to bow [to righteousness] and whose minds are bound with natural affection, / the Vṛṣṇis, foremost among the proud, do not bow forever to Suyodhana.

2.45

His natural friends and likewise the others, who do not transgress their counsel, / humor the son of Dhṛtarāṣṭra as if out of courtesy, for the sake of their own success.

2.46

When you make an assault, whose time has been fixed, / you will disperse these kings from him, as the rising sun with green horses disperses [the petals of] lotus beds.

2.47

Haughty with pride, he will act slighting those kings who are susceptible to dissension; / even an ordinary person does not endure humiliation, how much less an assembly of kings of more-than-human splendour?

2.48

The riches of proud men whose achievements of duty are incomplete, / their momentum checked by merely this much courtesy, are capable of stirring up arrogance.

2.49

Delusion never abandons a king puffed up with arrogance and pride; / the excessively deluded man is banished from statecraft, and from one devoid of statecraft the people become estranged.

2.50

An enemy, even a great one, whose network of roots has gradually decayed and grown loose, / stirred by the wind of disaffection, is easily uprooted by a patient man, like a tree.

2.51

Even a small conflict arising from the provocation of internal subjects destroys a ruler; / for a fire born of the friction among tree branches destroys a whole mountain.

2.52

A wise man should overlook the advancement of an enemy who tramples upon discipline; / such a one is truly easy to conquer when an opening appears, for the riches of the undisciplined end in calamity.

2.53

When the mandala of a king, through light conduct, has become divided within and without, / an adjacent neighbour, having overpowered it, sweeps it away like a river current a crumbling bank.

2.54

While the elder brother of Arjuna was thus giving unperturbed instruction on the path of statecraft to the agitated [Bhīma], / the son of Parāśara approached him, like a desired object of material gain arriving of itself.

2.55

Causing even beasts of the wild to attain tranquility through his sweet glances, / bearing around him a bright splendour, destroyer of sins, capable of being beheld;

2.56

Suddenly arrived, the sage—source of austerities and non-source of sins— / was seen with wonder by the king, like a heap of religious merit endowed with a body.

2.57

Then, rising aloft from his most precious seat, the edge of his reddish bark garment shaken, / with a scattered network of tawny rays, [Yudhiṣṭhira] shone like the hot-rayed sun from the peak of Mount Sumeru.

2.58

Having performed, with focused heart, like a ṛṣi the worship taught by elders to the foremost of ṛṣis, / the king afterwards adorned the seat permitted by him, just as tranquility adorns sacred learning.

2.59

Standing face to face with the sage of scattered splendour, his lips illumined by the clear rays of an emergent smile, / [the king] bearing the great, kindled mass of rays spread all around, assumed the fortune of the complete disc of the moon.

Commentaries (2)

Ghaṇṭāpatha — Mallinātha Sūri, Sanskrit
Traisargika — Citrabhānu, Sanskrit

Linked texts (1)

Kirātārjunīya — Bhāravi, Sanskrit