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creatures, malevolence towards all, mistrust in respect of all,
insincerity towards all, appropriation of other people's wealth,
ravishment of other people's wives, harshness of speech, anxiety,
propensity to speak ill of others, violent craving for the indulgence of
lust, gluttony, liability to premature death, violent propensity towards
malice, irresistible liking for falsehood, unconquerable appetite for
indulging in the passions, insatiable desire for indulging the ear,
evil-speaking, boastfulness, arrogance, non-doing of duties, rashness,
and perpetration of every kind of evil act,--all these proceed from
covetousness. In life, men are unable, whether infants or youth or
adults, to abandon covetousness. Such is the nature of covetousness that
it never decays even with the decay of life. Like the ocean that can
never be filled by the constant discharge of even innumerable rivers of
immeasurable depths, covetousness is incapable of being gratified by
acquisitions to any extent. The covetousness, however, which is never
gratified by acquisitions and satiated by the accomplishment of desires,
that which is not known in its real nature by the gods, the Gandharvas,
the Asuras, the great snakes, and, in fact, by all classes of beings,
that irresistible passion, along with that folly which invites the heart
to the unrealities of the world, should ever be conquered by a person of
cleansed soul. Pride, malice, slander, crookedness, and incapacity to
hear other people's good, are vices, O descendant of Kuru, that are to be
seen in persons of uncleansed soul under the domination of covetousness.
Even persons of great learning who bear in their minds all the voluminous
scriptures, and who are competent to dispel the doubts of others, show
themselves in this respect to be of weak understanding and feel great
misery in consequence of this passion. Covetous men are wedded to envy
and anger. They are outside the pale of good behaviour. Of crooked
hearts, the speeches they utter are sweet. They resemble, therefore, dark
pits whose mouths are covered with grass. They attire themselves in the
hypocritical cloak of religion. Of low minds, they rob the world, setting
up (if need be) the standard of religion and virtue. Relying upon the
strength of apparent reasons, they create diverse kinds of schisms in
religion. Intent upon accomplishing the purposes of cupidity, they
destroy the ways of righteousness. When wicked-souled persons under