Válmíki continued:—Then king Dasaratha made this speech to the chief of sages, and spoke in a voice sounding as a deep cloud, and in words equally graceful as they were worthy of confidence.
2. Venerable sir, said he, your speech of yesterday bespeaks of your intellectual light, and your getting over all afflictions by your extremely emaciating austerities.
3. Your words of yesterday, have delighted us by their perspicacity and gracefulness, as by a shower of enlivening ambrosia.
4. The pure words of the wise, are as cooling and edifying of the inward soul; as the clear and nectarious moon-beams, serve both to cool and dispel the gloom of the earth.
5. The good sayings of the great, afford the highest joy resulting from their imparting a knowledge of the Supreme, and by their dispelling the gloom of ignorance all at once.
6. The knowledge of the inestimable gem of our soul, is the best light that we can have in this world; and the learned man is as a tree beset by the creepers of reason and good sense.
7. The sayings of the wise serve to purge away our improper desires and doings, as the moon-beams dispel the thick gloom of night.
8. Your sayings, O sage, serve to lessen our desires and avarice which enchain us to this world, as the autumnal winds diminish the black clouds in the sky.
9. Your lectures have made us perceive the pure soul in its clear light, as the eye-salve of antimony (collyrium antigoni nigrum); makes the born-blind man to see the pure gold with his eyes.
10. The mist of worldly desires, which has overspread the atmosphere of our minds, is now beginning to disperse by the autumnal breeze of your sayings.