52. I remember to have decked myself in gold and pearls, and in gems and rubies upon earth, and to have sported with my youthful consorts in pleasure gardens and groves, and on hills and mountains.
53. And I remember also to have lived long as a tortoise on the borders of a river, and to have been carried away by the waves, sometimes under an arbour of creepers, over-hung with clusters of beautiful flowers; and at others to some wild cave washed by the waves.
54. I see how I acted the part of a goose with my covering of feathers, swimming on the high heaving waves on the surface of a lake.
55. Then seeing a poor gnat hanging on the moving leaf of a Sálmali branch, I became its associate and as contemptible a thing like itself.
56. I became an aquatic crane also, skimming playfully over the waters gushing from the hills, and slightly kissing the crests of the waves rising over the rapid torrent.
57. I remember also how I slighted the loves of amorous youths, and spurned off from me the Vidyádhara boys on the Gandha Mádana and Mandara hills.
58. I remember likewise the pangs of a lovelorn lass, when I lay pining in my bed, strewn over with the fragrance of camphor, and how I was decaying like the disk of the waning moon.
59. Thus I passed through many births, in the wombs of higher and lower animals, and found them all to be full of pain. And my soul has run over the billows of the irresistible current of life, like the fleet antelope, pacing its speed with the swiftness of the wind (Vátapramí).