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103. 24. ]
115 misery, whence can there be happiness to living beings who have fallen in the worldly existence; who are afflicted with birth, old age and death; who are caught by taints of attachment etc., and whose consciousness is taken away by the poison of the objects of senses ? Happiness is almost nothing; misery is manifold. Hear from me this tradition:
Once a certain man, exceedingly pained by the misery of poverty, left his own country and started to another country. (172)
Having crossed that country, full of the clusters of villages, cities and towns, he lost his way somehow only within few days. (173)
He arrived at a big forest; which was deeply covered over with trees viz. S'ala, Sarala, Tamala, the rows of palms, Bakula, Tilaka, Nichula, Akkola, Kadamba, Vanjula, Palas'a, Sallaki, Tinisa, Nimba, Kutaka, Nyagrodha, Khadira, Sarja, Arjuna, Amra, Jambu etc., whose extensive land was worshipped with the collections of flowers in the form of pearls reddish with the thick blood trickling out of the temples of intoxicated elephants pounded by the attacks of the peaks in the form of sharp nails of swift lions; which is terribls on account of cruel and angry wild beasts like a wild boar, a S'arabha, a bull, a deer, a tiger, a hyna, a bear, a Bhalla, a jackal, an elephant, a yak, a lion, a rhinoceros etc; whose directions were deafened with the cries given out by the acquatic animals, frightened and tossed on account of the water of the pools whirled by swift wild buffaloes. There, he was overpowered by thirst and