Aitareyabrahmana 7.13

7.13

Hariścandra, the son of Vedhas, of the lineage of Ikṣvāku, was a king without a son. He had a hundred wives, but obtained no son by them. Parvata and Nārada lived in his house; he asked Nārada: / "This son whom they desire, both those who understand and those who do not— / what indeed does one gain by a son? Tell me that, O Nārada!" / Asked with one [verse], he replied with ten: / "A father transfers a debt to him and attains immortality, / if he should see the face of a son born alive. // As many enjoyments as there are on earth, as many in the All-Knower fire, / as many as there are of living beings in the waters—greater than those is the [enjoyment] in a son for a father. // Always by means of a son have the fathers crossed over the deep darkness; / for he is born self from self, a raft laden with food, carrying [him] across. // What [use is] dirt, what the antelope skin, what the beard, what ascetic heat? / Desire a son, O brahmins; he is indeed an unblemished world. // Bread is breath, clothing is shelter, / gold is beauty, cattle are marriages; / a wife is a friend, a daughter is a misery, / and a son is a light in the highest heaven. // The husband enters the wife; becoming an embryo, he [enters] the mother; / becoming new again within her, he is born in the tenth month. // Therefore a wife is a wife, because he is born again in her; / she is a creation, this is a creation; this seed is placed [in her]. // The gods and the seers brought together great splendour for her; / the gods said to men: 'This is your mother again.' // 'There is no world for a sonless man'—that all beasts know; / therefore indeed a son mounts his mother and his sister. // This is the wide-striding, kindly path, / which those who possess sons tread, free from sorrow; / that [path] beasts and birds see, / therefore they mate even with the mother." / Having told this to him,