, the one going downward
and the other moving upward indeed, knowing those seven breaths ordained
to accomplish seven different functions, ascertaining the nature of the
Prajapatis and the Rishis and the high paths, many in number, of virtue
or righteousness, and the seven Rishis and the innumerable royal Rishis,
O scorcher of foes, and the great celestial Rishis and the other
regenerate Rishis endued with the effulgence of the Sun, beholding all
these falling away from their puissance in course of many long ages, O
monarch, hearing of the destruction of even of all the mighty beings in
the universe, understanding also the inauspicious end that is attained, O
king, by creatures of sinful acts, and the miseries endured by those that
fall into the river Vaitarani in the realms of Yama, and the inauspicious
wanderings of creatures through diverse wombs, and the character of their
residence in the unholy uterus in the midst of blood and water and phlegm
and urine and faeces, all of foul smell, and then in bodies that result
from the union of blood and the vital seed, of marrow and sinews,
abounding with hundreds of nerves and arteries and forming an impure
mansion of nine doors, comprehending also what is for his own good what
those divers combinations are which are productive of good beholding the
abominable conduct of creatures whose natures are characterised by
Darkness or Passion or Goodness, O chief of Bharata's race--conduct that
is reprehended, in view of its incapacity to acquire Emancipation, by the
followers of the Sankhya doctrine who are fully conversant with the Soul,
beholding the swallowing up of the Moon and the Sun by Rahu, the falling
of stars from their fixed positions and the diversions of constellations
from their orbits, knowing the sad separation of all united objects and
the diabolical behaviour of creatures in devouring one another, seeing
the absence of all intelligence in the infancy of human beings and the
deterioration and destruction of the body, marking the little attachment
creatures have to the quality of Sattwa in consequence of their being
overwhelmed by wrath and stupefaction, beholding also only one among
thousands of human beings resolved to struggle after the acquisition of
Emancipation, understanding the difficulty of attaining to Emancipation
according to what is stated in the scriptures, seeing the marked
solicitude that creatures manifest for all unattained objects and their
comparative indifference to all objects that have been attained marking
the wickedness that results from all objects of the senses O king and the
repulsive bodies, O son of Kunti, of persons reft of life, and the
residence, always fraught with grief, of human beings, O Bharata, in
houses (in the midst of spouses and children), knowing the end of those
terrible and fallen men who become guilty of slaying Brahmanas, and of
those wicked Brahmanas that are addicted to the drinking of alcoholic
stimulants, and the equally sad end of those that become criminally
attached to the spouses of their preceptors, and of those men, O
Yudhishthira, that do not properly reverence their mothers, as also of
those that have no reverence and worship to offer to the deities,
understanding also, with the help of that knowledge (which their
philosophy imparts), the end that of all perpetrators of wicked acts, and
the diverse ends that overtake those who have taken birth among the
intermediate orders, ascertaining the diverse declarations of the Vedas,
the courses of seasons, the fading of years, of months, of fortnights,
and of days, beholding directly the waxing and the waning of the Moon,
seeing the rising and the ebbing of the seas, and the diminution of
wealth and its increase once more, and the separation of united objects,
the lapse of Yugas, the destruction of mountains, the drying up of
rivers, the deterioration of (the purity of) the several orders and the
end also of that deterioration occurring repeatedly, beholding the birth,
decrepitude, death, and sorrows of creatures, knowing truly the faults
attaching to the body and the sorrows to which human beings are subject,
and the vicissitudes to which the bodies of creatures are subject, and
understanding all the faults that attach to their own souls, and also all
the inauspicious faults that attach to their own bodies (the followers of
the Sankhya philosophy succeed in attaining to Emancipation).
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