Garudapurana 1.115

The glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa—115. / Sūta said: / A bad woman, a bad friend, a bad king, a bad son, / a bad maiden, and a bad country—one should shun them from afar.

Dharma has departed; austerity is shaken; truth has gone far away; the earth bears barren fruit; people are deceitful; brāhmaṇas are devoted to greed; / men are subject to women; women are fickle; base people are elevated; alas, hard indeed is life in the Kali age; blessed are those who have died!

Blessed are those who do not see the ruin of the country, the destruction of the family, / the wife given over to the thoughts of another, and the son sunken into evil vices.

In a bad son there is no peace; in a bad wife where is delight? / In a bad friend there is no trust; in a bad kingdom there is no living.

Another's food, another's wealth, another's bed, another's wives, / and dwelling in another's house—these take away glory even from Indra.

From conversation, from bodily contact, from company, from eating together, / from sharing seats, beds, and vehicles, sin transfers to men.

Women are ruined by beauty; austerity is ruined by anger; / cows [are ruined] by grazing at doorways; the best of the twice-born by the food of a śūdra.

From sitting together, from sharing one bed, from eating together, from mingling in the dining line, / sin transfers from one to another, like water from pot to pot.

In pampering there are many faults; in disciplining there are many virtues; / therefore one should discipline a student and a son, and never pamper them.

Travel is the old age of embodied beings; water is the decay of mountains; / lack of intercourse is the decay of women; and sunlight is the decay of garments.

The lowest desire conflict; the middling desire peace; / the best desire honor; for honor is the wealth of the great.

Honor is indeed the root of purpose; when honor is present, what is the use of wealth? / For one whose pride in honor is destroyed, what is the use of wealth, what is the use of life?

The lowest desire wealth; the middling desire both wealth and honor; / the best desire honor; for honor is the wealth of the great.

Even in the forest, hungry lions do not bow to anyone, nor [plead] looking for meat; / those born in noble families, even when bereft of riches, do not undertake low deeds.

No consecration nor ritual investiture is performed for the lion in the forest; / his kingship over the beasts belongs to him by his own nature, whose vigor is ever elevated.

A careless merchant, an arrogant servant, an ascetic given to luxury, a lustful pauper, / and a courtesan who speaks harsh words—these do not undertake their proper duties.

A generous man who is poor; a miser endowed with wealth; an disobedient son; the service of a wicked person; / and the death of a man while doing good to others: these arise as five misfortunes.

Separation from a beloved woman, insult from one’s own kinsmen, the remainder of a debt, service to an evil person, / and friends turning away because of poverty—these five severe things burn without fire.

And among those thousands of worries, four worries are equal to the edge of a sword: / insult from a base person, a starving household, an alienated wife, and obstruction caused by one's own kinsman.

An obedient son, knowledge that brings wealth, freedom from disease, association with the virtuous, / and a beloved and submissive wife—these are the five that uproot sorrow.

The deer, the elephant, the moth, the bee, and the fish are killed by merely one of the five [senses]; / how should a single turbulent man not be destroyed, who indulges all five with all five [senses]?

The impatient, the harsh, the arrogant, the poorly clad, and the one who arrives uninvited— / these five brāhmaṇas are not honoured, even if equal to Bṛhaspati.

Lifespan, action, wealth, knowledge, and death— / these five are determined for an embodied being while still being born.

In climbing a mountain, in water, in a herd of cattle, in subduing the wicked, / and in lifting up a fallen person—these five qualities are remembered as commendable.

The shade of a cloud, affection in a villain, intimacy with other men’s wives, / youth, and wealth—these five conditions are indeed unstable.

Unstable is life in the world; unstable are wealth and youth; / unstable are sons, wives, and the rest; dharma, renown, and fame are stable.

A hundred[-year] life is very short; night takes away half of it; / half of even that is rendered useless through disease, grief, old age, and fatigue.

The lifespan of men is measured at a hundred years; half of that is spent in the night; of the remaining half, a bit more than half is spent in the period of childhood; / some is spent in service to kings, in sorrow over separation from relatives, and in death; the remainder is as flickering as the crest of a water wave—what use is pride to proud men?

Made of day and night, [time] roams the world in the form of old age; / death devours creatures, as a serpent devours the wind.

Whether moving or standing, waking or sleeping, if it is not / for the welfare of all beings, a man's exertion is like that of a beast.

What is the difference between a beast and a human-beast whose intellect is devoid of reflection on harm and benefit, / whose mind is argued over by many regarding Vedic doctrine, and who is satisfied merely with filling his belly?

He whose fame is not celebrated in heroism, in asceticism, in generosity, / in learning, or in the acquisition of wealth, is merely his mother’s excrement.

That which is lived even for a moment by men renowned for discernment, valor, and fame, with unbroken pride— / that alone the wise call a life; even a crow lives for a long time and eats funeral offerings.

What is the use of a life devoid of wealth and honour? What is the use of a friend anxious with fear? / Practice the resolve of a lion! Go forward, do not despair! Even a crow lives for a long time and eats funeral offerings.

He who in this world shows no compassion toward himself, nor toward a guru, nor toward his servants, / nor toward the wretched, nor acts for the sake of a friend—what is the fruit of his life in the world of men? Even a crow lives for a long time and eats funeral offerings.

He whose days come and go devoid of the three aims of life [dharma, artha, and kāma] / does not truly live, though breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows.

The fruitfulness of a livelihood lies in independence, not in dependence on others; / those whose actions depend on others are dead even while alive.

A base man is easily filled, just as the palm of a mouse is easily filled; / a discontented, base man is satisfied even with very little.

The shadow of a cloud, fire from grass, service to a base person, water on a road, / the passion of a courtesan, and affection in a rogue—these six are like bubbles.

A person is not made happy merely by a matter promised in speech; / for life has honour as its root; when honour is withered, whence happiness?

The strength of the weak is the king; the strength of an infant is crying; / the strength of a fool is silence; the strength of a thief is falsehood.

In proportion as a man masters the treatise, / in that proportion his intellect develops and he takes delight in knowledge.

In proportion as a man sets his mind on the good, / in that proportion he is embraced everywhere, well-loved by the world.

A man is ruined by three things: greed, negligence, and misplaced trust; / therefore, one should not be greedy, nor negligent, nor should one trust [the untrustworthy].

One should fear danger only so long as the danger has not arrived; / but when severe danger has arisen, one should stand as if fearless.

The remainder of a debt, the remainder of a fire, and likewise the remainder of a disease / grow again and again; therefore, one should leave no remainder.

One should return deed for deed, and harm for harm; / I see no fault in that: one should practice fault against the wicked.

One who ruins an undertaking behind one's back and speaks sweetly to one's face— / one should avoid such a friend, as well as an enemy full of deceit.

Through association with a wicked person, even a virtuous man is ruined; / even clear water is muddied by mire.

He eats, the good twice-born eats, discerning equally what remains; / therefore, by every effort, a twice-born should be honoured with diligence.

That is eaten which is the remainder of what a twice-born has eaten; he is wise who commits no sin; / that is friendship which is maintained behind one's back; that is dharma which is practiced without hypocrisy.

That is not an assembly where there are no elders; they are not elders who do not speak dharma; / that is not dharma where truth is absent; that is not truth which is tainted by deceit.

Just as the brāhmaṇa is [foremost] among men, the sun among splendours, / and the head among all limbs, so truth is supreme among religious observances.

That is auspiciousness where the mind is serene; that is living where there is no service to another; / that is wealth earned which is enjoyed by one’s own kin; that is roaring which is [heard] among enemies in battle.

She is a [true] woman who does not display arrogance; he is happy who is free from craving; / he is a friend in whom there is trust; he is a [true] man whose senses are subdued.

There respect and affection are abandoned where friendship is destroyed; / that alone is truly praiseworthy when one’s own soul is engaged in praise.

Of rivers, of sacred hearth-fires, of the Mahābhārata, and of a family lineage, / the origin should not be searched out; defect is not removed from the origin.

Rivers end in salt water; sexual union ends in the estrangement of women; / backbiting ends in public gossip; wealth ends the three kinds of suffering.

Royal sovereignty ends with the curse of a brāhmaṇa; spiritual luster ends with sin; / sip ends with residing in an encampment; O lord, the family ends because of a woman.

All dwellings end in destruction; high rises end in falls; / unions end in separation; for life indeed ends in death.

If one desires someone to return, one should not accompany them too far; / one should turn back from the water's edge and from a lushly colored tree.

One should not dwell where there is no leader, nor where there are many leaders; / one should not dwell where a woman is the leader, [nor] should one dwell where a child is the leader.

Her father protects her in maidenhood; her husband protects her in youth; / and her son protects her in old age: a woman does not deserve independence.

One should abandon a barren woman in the eighth year, one whose children have died in the ninth, / one who bears only daughters in the eleventh, and one who speaks unpleasantly immediately.

Due to human lack of purpose and through fear of attendants, / three [kinds of women] transgressing proper bounds stay with their husbands for the sake of wealth.

An exhausted horse, an elephant in rut, cows that have calved for the first time, / and frogs out of water—a wise person should avoid them from afar.

Those afflicted by greed have neither friend nor kin; those afflicted by lust have neither fear nor shame; / those afflicted by anxiety have neither comfort nor sleep; those afflicted by hunger have neither strength nor vigor.

Whence is there sleep for a poor man, for a chief servant of another, / for one devoted to another's wife, and for one who steals another's property?

A man sleeps comfortably who is free of debt and free of disease; / and he indeed eats at leisure who is not united with a wife.

A lotus becomes elevated according to the measure of the water; / a servant becomes proud when his master is powerful.

When a lotus remains in its place, Varuṇa and the Sun are its friends; / when it has fallen from its place, those very two cause its rotting and drying up.

Those who were friends to one established in his place become his enemies; / the Sun's affection is for the lotus in the water, [yet] it dries it up when it is removed to dry land.

Things established in their place are honored, and those established in their position are honored; / fallen from their place, hair, teeth, nails, and men are not honored.

Conduct reveals one's family; speech reveals one's country; / deference reveals affection; the body reveals one's food.

Rain upon the sea is useless; food for one who is sated is useless; / a gift to the wealthy is useless; useless is a good deed done for a base person.

Even when standing far away, he is near who resides in one's heart; / even when standing near, he is far away who has departed from one's heart.

Distortion of the face, a plaintive voice, sweating of the limbs, and great fear— / whatever signs appear at death, those same signs appear in a beggar.

Better is the life of a hunchback, of an insect crushed, / or of one driven out by the wind dwelling upon a peak, than begging.

For since Viṣṇu, the lord of the universe, went to dwarfhood upon begging, / who else is greater than him whose dignity does not diminish upon asking?

A mother is an enemy, a father a foe, by whom their children are not educated; / they do not shine in the midst of an assembly, like herons in the midst of swans.

Learning is the superior beauty of the deformed; learning is an exceedingly hidden treasure; learning brings about virtue and makes one dear to people; learning is the teacher of teachers; / learning brings about the destruction of the affliction of relatives; learning is the supreme deity; learning is honored among kings; a human being devoid of learning is a beast.

Inside the house, property is seen and touched, / and it is entirely capable of being carried off, but learning cannot be taken away by others.

Viṣṇu formerly taught the essence of statecraft spoken by Śaunaka and all religious observances; / there Śaṅkara heard it; / from Śaṅkara Vyāsa heard it, and from Vyāsa we ourselves [heard it].

Thus ends the one hundred and fifteenth chapter, entitled 'The Description of the Essence of Statecraft Spoken by Śaunaka and Other Topics', in the section on conduct, in the first part called the first section of the glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa.