preceptors. Thou also art
entitled to their respect, being their king. Doing them reverence, thou
art entitled to receive reverence from them. Reflecting on all this, it
was not proper for thee to proclaim before these foremost of men the fact
of this congress between two persons of opposite sexes, if, indeed, thou
art really acquainted with the rules of propriety in respect of speech. O
king of Mithila, I am staying in thee without touching thee at all even
like a drop of water on a lotus leaf that stays on it without drenching
it in the least. If, notwithstanding instructions of Panchasikha of the
mendicant order, thy knowledge has become abstracted from the sensual
objects to which it relates? Thou hast, it is plain, fallen off from the
domestic mode of life but thou hast not yet attained to Emancipation that
is so difficult to arrive at. Thou stayest between the two, pretending
that thou hast reached the goal of Emancipation. The contact of one that
is emancipated with another that has been so, or Purusha with Prakriti,
cannot lead to an intermingling of the kind thou dreadest. Only those
that regard the soul to be identical with the body, and that think the
several orders and modes of life to be really different from one another,
are open to the error of supposing an intermingling to be possible. My
body is different from thine. But my soul is not different from thy soul.
When I am able to realise this, I have not the slightest doubt that my
understanding is really not staying in thine though I have entered into
thee by Yoga.[1709] A pot is borne in the hand. In the pot is milk. On
the milk is a fly. Though the hand and pot, the pot and milk, and the
milk and the fly, exist together, yet are they all distinct from each
other. The pot does not partake the nature of the milk. Nor does the milk
partake the nature of the fly. The condition of each is dependent on
itself, and can never be altered by the condition of that other with
which it may temporarily exist. After this manner, colour and practices,
though they may exist together with and in a person that is emancipate,
do not really attach to him. How then can an intermingling of orders be
possible in consequence of this union of myself with thee? Then, again, I
am not superior to thee in colour. Nor am I a Vaisya, nor a Sudra. I am,
O king, of the same order with thee, born of a pure race. There was a
royal sage of the name of Pradhana. It is evident that thou hast