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palace with a slow lordly gait like so many well-decorated celestial nymphs and will give you delight by their juvenile amorous pranks. You can leave off your idea of taking Diksā for the present, and can fearlessly enjoy all worldly pleasures with them to your entire satisfaction. After my death, when you have become of mature age, and when you have a large number of progeny, you are at liberty to renounce all worldly attachments and to take Bhāgavati Diksa at the pious hands of Sramaņa Bhagavān Mahāvira I am anxious to fondle your young babies.
Megha Kumāra-said Mother ! Whatever you have said is true. But this human body is as frail as a water-bubble; it is surro. unded by numerous miseries; it is exposed to the agonies of a variety of diseases; and this body is sure to be destroyed sooner or later. No one can definitely say who will die first and who will die at a later date. Therefore, O mother ! You willingly give me your permission, so that, with your blessing, I may endeavour to accomplish the best during my this human life. O mother! the worldly pleasures which you are insisting upon me to enjoy, are unclean, imperpetual, shameful, transitory, irregular, destructible, and fit to be abandoned necessarily sooner or later. They cannot now give me delight. Besides, these worldly pleasures are perishable, and no one can say whether I will die earlier or they will perish before ne'
Knowing that Mégha Kumāra was not a person who could be enticed by the offer of worldly pleasures, Dharini-mātā now showing him the inconveniences of ascetic life, said.--'My dear son! You do not know that strict observance of the rules of ascetic life declared by Bramaņa Bhagavān Mahāvira is like chewing iron-beads with the aid of a set of one's natural fickle teeth It is like eating morsels of fine dust. It is like swimming in a direction contrary to that of the current of forcibly rushing waters of the Ganges. It is like walking bare-footed on the edge of a sharp sword. O son 1 You will have dry insipid food to eat and old torn-out clothes to put on. You shall have to live in a
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