Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 408

Old Age
993. Losing their flavour (appeal) by (the fact of their) crowding (bahalattaṇa) one after another, enjoyments fail (to give thrill) and falter inside the hearts. Men with limited resources, however, are said (sunamti) to get their fill of happiness.
994. The heart, when once attached even to an insipid object, is not possible to be turned away. People's belief in the fickleness of the heart in this respect is only a delusion.
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995. The two-fold intellectual aspirations (of men), eagerly looking forward (to bliss) in both the worlds, are simultaneously blocked (and buried deep) inside the heart's (cavity) by women, with the (lid of) their firmly formed breasts (covering the heart).
996. How does the Bodiless (Cupid) strike ? How, indeed, can his shafts of flowers pierce (the heart of the victim)? Thus, when the God of Love himself is indistinct (and obscure), how can tangible pleasures (flow forth) from him?
997. How will women's (tender) heart develop this hardness? (To achieve it), therefore, is this very adamantine crust. (vajjam) of breasts laid (over the heart)!
998. Man delights in his own actions and yet bewails his own conduct and character. He condemns other's natures but. aspires (sihai) (to achieve) the merits of others.
999. (With age) man's hair becomes long and grey, which, I believe, are veritable paths taken up by the emotions of the heart, now going out, every day, as they came (before).
1000. The grip (viņivesa) of the stoop, bending the whole body, shows by its grey hair the fact of the whole body turning soon into an alms-bowl (karamka) of old age.
1001. The old man has a body bent in all places, bowed (ohura) and pulled by the tendrils of skin-folds, its face turned now towards the earth, as it were, (soon to be its burial place).
1002. The dark shade of the hair getting worne out with old age, falls, I believe, over the various parts of the body, in thick black drops, under the guise of black spots (freckles) on the skin.
1003. The grey substance (of old age) flows out from the breasts of the lady of the house under the guise of the milk-stream, being looked at with a sore mind by her husband, who feels that