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Merits and Demerits
wealth and wives, keep a class of low people close in attendance (on themselves).
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864. Look at this contradiction: wine, taken in a large measure (bahua), intoxicates (maei ); its small quantity does not. Wealth, however, even a little of it, gives intoxication (vanity); but not so, if in plenty.
865. Even people, with proved virtues, lose their virtues when they become rich. Men without virtues, however, go (miles) away (dure) from virtues, if they obtain wealth.
866. Some people, mean-minded, seek to obtain richness through merits; others of pure behaviour, however, want to acquire merits through wealth!
867. Houses there are where (only) the servants are wicked, or where the masters (alone) are rogues, or where both (servants and masters) are villainous. Consider such houses as successively hard and difficult (to deal with).
868. As much (and as long) as these men in power, although wanting in (thought and) discrimination, keep away from the great with their faces turned against them, so much (and so long) they have a chance of) picking up some merits in themselves.
869. These good men, with all their merits, have become so unsuccessful with all the people that even (if they eschew virtue), their behaviour (otherwise), full of lapses (in morals), will not now bring them any credit (greatness).
870. Taken as merits, even bad traits yield manifest fruit ( reward) with kings; since (jai) they cannot understand what is bad about these traits, having been represented (to them) as good points.
871. (in their dealings) with fools, feeling (sore and) disgusted by incidents (vaiara), in which their excellence of merit and judgment is not understood (and appreciated), good men retire to the forests from their native villages.
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872. Whole day, good men are filled with two-fold grief : that they had not (the good fortune) to be born in an age when good men prospered and that they are now born in the age (ruled by) the vile and the wicked.
G. 7
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