nce of one's senses. Always engaged in penances
and self-restraint and desirous of what is for thy good, do thou live and
act, devoted to peace and tranquillity. The period of life, of every man,
is like a steed. The nature of that steed is unmanifest. The (sixteen)
elements (mentioned before) constitute its body. Its nature is
exceedingly subtile. Kshanas, and Trutis, and Nimeshas are the hair on
its body. The twilights constitute its shoulder joints. The lighted and
the dark fortnights are its two eyes of equal power. Months are its other
limbs. That steed is running incessantly. If thy eyes be not blind,
beholding then that steed incessantly moving forward in its invisible
course, do thou set thy heart on righteousness, after hearing what thy
preceptors have to say on the question of the next world. They that fall
away from righteousness and that conduct themselves recklessly, that
always display malice towards others and betake themselves to evil ways
are obliged to assume (physical) bodies in the regions of Yama and suffer
diverse afflictions, in consequence of their unrighteous acts of diverse
kind.[1716] That king who is devoted to righteousness and who protects
and chastises the good and the wicked with discrimination, attains to
those regions that belong to man of righteous deeds. By doing diverse
kinds of good acts, he attains to such felicity as is faultless and as is
incapable of being attained to by undergoing even thousands of
births.[1717] Furious dogs of frightful mien, crows of iron beaks, flocks
of ravens and vultures and other birds, and blood-sucking worms, assail
the man who transgresses the commands of his parents and preceptors when
he goes to hell after death.[1718] That sinful wretch who, in consequence
of his recklessness, transgresses the ten boundaries that have been fixed
by the Self-born himself, is obliged to pass his time in great affliction
in the wild wastes that occur in the dominions of the king of
Pitris.[1719] That man who is tainted with cupidity, who is in love with
untruth, who always takes a delight in deception and cheating, and who
does injuries to others by practising hypocrisy and deception, has to go
to deep hell and suffer great woe and affliction for his acts of
wickedness. Such a man is forced to bathe in the broad river called
Vaitarani whose waters are scalding, to enter into a forest of trees
whose leaves are as sharp as swords, and then to lie down on a bed of
battle-a