Setubandha

SR No.: 001384
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 812
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English & Literature
File Size: 14 MB

Page 191

SETUBANDHA
maintains a definite attitude (towards such issues) lends support to any of these.16
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24. 'Despise not the utterances of one that is bowed with age.17 Their purport is based on experience,18 and they are consistent in meaning, even though the words are incoherent and harsh. They are only ridiculed by those who are foolish because of their youth.
25. 'Leaning on thine19 arms, the host of apes will prove valiant even in a war with the gods. Even the dust of the earth assails the sun, deriving its strength from the wind.
26. 'But weighty projects whose course is hard to determine, fail, even though well-planned, if conducted in the wrong way by violating established principles; like as the unfathomable oceans, prized for their riches, are reduced to a state of chaos, even though calm, when they go astray by overflowing their shores (during the deluge).
27. 'My supersensual knowledge, derived from the scriptures, and conforming to trustworthy lore, and unshakable though assailed (by arguments), is weightier than even direct experience that is based on perception through the medium of the senses, and somehow tallies fortuitously with the truth.
28. 'What those who are equal in strength and valour can achieve, when united, cannot be achieved, when they are divided. A single sun might intensely heat the universe, but the (twelve) united suns (of the epoch of ruin) destroy it altogether.
29. 'Misplaced zeal proves ineffectual, and humiliates one's pride, and causes no great fear to the enemy, like an arrow taken up in a fit of rage.
16. Cf. Kulanatha in Extracts. Acc. to Råmadāsa: Is there any need to aver what old age, coming to a definite conclusion, holds to be true, namely, that despondency destroys fortitude etc. The interpretation does not suit the context very well as Jambavat's intention is to glorify old age to make his opinions more convincing.
17. Or, utterances matured by age.'
18. Or, "They should be comprehended by realising their purport.' 19. Ref. to Sugrīva.