pearance at the
proper time. Honour and dishonour, gain and loss, destruction and growth,
are seen to set in. No one can resist them (when they come). One of them
is enduring, for disappear it must after appearance. The sorrows one
suffers is the result of one's acts. The happiness one enjoys flows from
one's acts. From the time when one lies within the mother's womb one
begins to enjoy and endure one's acts of a past life. Whatever acts good
and bad one does in childhood, youth, or old age, one enjoys and endures
their consequences in one's next life in similar ages. As the calf
recognises its dam even when the latter may stand among thousands of her
species, after the same manner the acts done by one in one's past life
come to one in one's next life (without any mistake) although one may live
among thousands of one's species. As a piece of dirty cloth is whitened
by being washed in water, after the same manner, the righteous, cleansed
by continuous exposure unto the fire of fasts and penances, at last
attain to unending happiness. O thou of high intelligence, the desires
and purposes of those whose sins have been washed off by long-continued
penances well-performed, become crowned with fruition. The track of the
righteous cannot be discerned even as that of birds in the sky or that
of fishes in the water. There is no need of speaking ill of others, nor
of reciting the instances in which others have tripped. On the other
hand, one should always do what is delightful, agreeable, and beneficial
to one's own self."'"[1736]

SECTION CCCXXIV

"'Yudhishthira said, "Tell me, O grandsire, how the high-souled Suka of
austere penances took birth as the son of Vyasa, and how did he succeed
in attaining to the highest success? Upon what woman did Vyasa, endued
with wealth of asceticism, beget that son of his? We do not know who was
Suka's mother, nor do we know anything of the birth of that high-souled
ascetic. How was it that, when he was a mere boy, his mind became
directed to the knowledge of the subtile (Brahma)? Indeed, in this world
no second person can be seen in whom such predilections could be marked
at so early an age. I desire to hear all this in detail, O thou of great
intelligence. I am never satiated with hearing thy excellent and
nectar-like words. Tell me, O grandsire in their proper order, of the
greatness, and the knowledge of Suka and of his union with the (Supreme)
Soul!"

"'Bhishma continued, "The Rishi