20. There were rows of flags fluttering like lotuses, in the limpid lake of the azure sky; and the loud noise of the songs of the citizens was heard at a distance.
21. Here they saw three beautiful and goodly looking houses, with turrets of gold and gems shining afar, like peaks of mount Meru under the blazing sun. (These were the human bodies, standing and walking upright upon the earth, and decorated with crowns and coronets on their heads).
22. Two of these were not the works of art, and the third was without its foundation; and the three princes entered at last into the last of these. (The two first were the bodies of men in their states of sleep and deep sleep, called swápa sopor or swapnas-somnus and sushupti-hupnos or hypnotes, which are inborn in the soul; but it is the jágrata or waking body which is the unstable work of art).
23. They entered this house, and sat and walked about in it with joyous countenances; and chanced to get three pots as bright as gold therein.
(These pots were the three sheaths of the soul, mind and of the vital principle, called the pránamáyá-kosha). 24. The two first broke into pieces upon their lifting, and the third was reduced to dust at its touch. The far sighted princes however, took up the dust and made a new pot therewith? It means, that though these sheaths are as volatile as air, yet it is possible to employ the vital principle to action.
25. Then these gluttonous princes cooked in it a large quantity of corn for their food; amounting to a hundred dronas minus one, for subsistence of their whole life-time. (It means that the whole life-time of a hundred years, allotted to man in the present age of the world, is employed in consuming so many measures of food, except perhaps one Drona, which is saved by his occasional fasts during his long life).
26. The princes then invited three Bráhmans (childhood, youth and age) to the fare prepared by them, two of whom (childhood and youth) were bodiless; and the third (i.e. old age) had no mouth wherewith to eat.
27. The mouthless Bráhman took a hundred dronas of the rice and eat it up, because he devoured the child and youth, and the princes took the remainder of the Bráhman’s food for their diet (which was nothing).
28. The three princes having refreshed themselves with the relics of the Bráhman’s food; took their rest in the same house of their next abode, and then went out in their journey of hunting after new abodes (or repeated transmigrations).
29. Thus I have related to you, O Ráma! the whole of the story of the boy and princes; now consider well its purport in your mind, and you will become wise thereby.