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UTTARÂDHYAYANA.
against his will, and accompanied only by his Karman , he enters-a new existence, either a good or a bad one. (24)
“When they have burned with fire on the funeral pile his forlorn, helpless corpse, his wife and sons and kinsfolk will choose another man to provide for them. (25)
"Life drags on (towards death) continuously?; old age carries off the vigour of man. King of the Pañkâlas, mark my words: do no fearful actions." (26)
'I, too, know just as well as you, O saint, what you have told me in your speech : pleasures will get a hold on men and are not easily abandoned by such as we are, sir. (27)
'O Kitra, in Hastinapura 3 I saw the powerful king (Sanatkumâra), and I took that sinful resolution in my desire for sensual pleasures. (28)
'And since I did not repent of it, this has come of it, that I still long for sensual pleasures, though I know the Law. (29)
As an elephant, sinking down in a quagmire,
1 This might be translated, as Professor Leumann suggests : possessing Karman as the germ (of his future destiny); still I prefer the meaning vouched for by the commentators, because karmabîga generally means the germ, i.e. cause of Karman, see below, Thirty-second Lecture, verse 7.
2 See Professor Leumann's remarks on this verse, 1. c., p. 137 f.
3 When Sunanda, wife of Sanatkumâra, paid homage to Sambhàta, then a Gaina monk, and touched his feet with the curls of her soft hair, he was possessed by the desire to become a universal monarch in reward for his penances. This is the nidâ na of which the text speaks, and what I render in this connection by 'taking a resolution. For the story itself, see my Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Maharashtrî, p. 5 f.
