Skandapurana 4.3.67.4

4.3.67.4

seeing a doe giving birth, its eyes filled with compassion, / the tiger departs far away, averting its gaze, oh! / A tigress recounting the tiger's ways, and a doe the deer's behavior, / both speak with each other like female friends, full of joy; / even upon seeing a Śabara with an uplifted bow, the śambara deer, / bold, does not leave the path, and the man even scratches it; / the red deer, undisturbed, rubs against the wild buffalo; / a female yak measures her tail against the hair of a Śabara woman; / both this wild ox and the porcupine stand in one place, / restrained by the sage's splendor, having discarded intense malice; / and two rams, desiring victory, do not prepare for a head-butting fight; / even a jackal softly touches a young fawn with its paw; / beasts of prey graze on grass and bushes, for food [of prey] is an abode of disaster: / in both worlds it brings misery; fie on the eating of meat! / He who cooks meat for himself, deluded by sin, / shall dwell in hell for as many [years] as the creature had hairs; / the foolish who nourish their own lives with the lives of others, / after suffering in hells until the end of the kalpa, are eaten by those same [creatures] in turn; / meat is never to be eaten, even when one's life is in the throat; / if it must be eaten, then one's own flesh should be eaten, never another's; / better are these beasts of prey, through their devotion to [Agastya] the son of Mitra and Varuṇa, / whose mind is free from slaughter, than men intent on violence; / even the crane does not eat the fish moving before it in the pond; / the large fish do not devour the small fish; / on one side [are set] all meats, and on the other fish-flesh alone: / remembering this sacred tradition, do they therefore abandon fish? / Even the hawk, seeing a quail, turns its face away; / yet strange it is that even here honey-drinking bees wander about with tainted intent: / having long enjoyed the hells, addicted to drinking wine,