[CHAPTER LXXVII.]
Narrative of Chúdálá and Sikhidhwaja.
Argument:—Story of the Princess Chúdálá and her marriage with Sikhidhwaja and their youthful sports.
VASISHTHA related:—Ráma! do you keep your view fixed to one object, as it was kept in the mind of Bhagíratha; and do you pursue your calling with a calm and quiet understanding, as it was done by that steady minded prince in the accomplishment of his purpose! (For he that runs many ways, stands in the middle and gets to the end of none).
2. Give up your thoughts of this and that (shilly-shallying), and confine the flying bird of your mind within your bosom, and remain in full possession of yourself after the example of the resolute prince Sikhidhwaja of old.
3. Ráma asked:—Who was this Sikhidhwaja, sir, and how did he maintain the firmness of his purpose? Please explain this fully to me for the edification of my understanding.
4. Vasishtha replied:—It was in a former Dwápara age, that there lived a loving pair of consorts who are again to be born in a future period, in the same manner and at the same place.
5. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me, O great preacher! how the past could be the same as at present, and how can these again be alike in future also. (Since there can be no cause of the likeness of past ages and their productions with those of the present or future. It is reasonable to believe the recurrence of such other things, but not of the same and very things as of yore).
6. Vasishtha replied:—Such is the irreversible law of destiny and the irreversible course of nature, that the creation of the world must continue in the same manner by the invariable will of the creative Brahmá and others. (i.e. The repeated creation of worlds must go on in the same rotation by the inevitable will (Satya Sankalpa) of the creative power; wherefore bygone things are to return and be re-born over and over again).
7. As those which had been plentiful before come to be as plenteous again, so the past appears at present and in future also. Again many things come to being that had not been before, and so many others become extinct in course of time (e. g. as past crops return again and again and vegetables grow where there were none, and as a lopped off branch grows no more).