He who earns fame
from keep of cattle, who is employed in agriculture and the means of
acquiring wealth, who is pure in behaviour and attends to the study of
the Vedas, is called a Vaisya.[565] He who takes pleasure in eating every
kind of food, who is engaged in doing every kind of work, who is impure
in behaviour, who does not study the Vedas, and whose conduct is unclean,
is said to be a Sudra. If these characteristics be observable in a Sudra,
and if they be not found in a Brahmana, then such a Sudra is no Sudra,
and, such a Brahmana is no Brahmana. By every means should cupidity and
wrath be restrained. This as also self-restraint, are the highest results
of Knowledge. Those two passions (viz., cupidity and wrath), should, with
one's whole heart, be resisted. They make their appearance for destroying
one's highest good. One should always protect one's prosperity from one's
wrath, one's penances from pride; one's knowledge from honour and
disgrace; and one's soul from error. That intelligent person, O
regenerate one, who does all acts without desire of fruit, whose whole
wealth exists for charity, and who performs the daily Homa, is a real
Renouncer.[566] One should conduct oneself as a friend to all creatures,
abstaining from all acts of injury. Rejecting the acceptance of all
gifts, one should, by the aid of one's own intelligence, be a complete
master of one's passions. One should live in one's soul where there can
be no grief. One would then have no fear here and attain to a fearless
region hereafter.
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