VASISHTHA related:—Hearing these words of the beauteous lady, her husband had not the wit to dive into the meaning of what she said, or to understand what she meant by her reliance in the soul, but jestingly told to her.
2. Sikhidhwaja said:—How incongruous is thy speech, and how unbecoming it is to thy age, that being but a girl you speak of great things, go on indulging your regal pleasures and sports as you do in your royal state.
3. Leaving all things you live in the meditation of a nothing (i.e. leaving all formal worship, you adore a formless Deity); and if you have all what is real to sense, how is it possible for you to be so graceful with an unreal nothing? (Nothing is nothing, and can effect nothing).
4. Whoso abandons the enjoyments of life, by saying he can do without them; is like an angry man refraining from his food and rest for a while, and then weakens himself in his hunger and restlessness, and can never retain the gracefulness of his person.
5. He who abstains from pleasures and enjoyments, and subsists upon empty air, is as a ghost devoid of a material form and figure, and lives a bodiless shadow in the sky.
6. He that abandons his food and raiment, his bedstead and sleep, and all things besides; and remains devoutly reclined in one soul only, cannot possibly preserve the calmness of his person. (The yogis are emaciated in their bodies, and never look so fresh and plump as the princess).
7. That I am not the body nor bodiless, that I am nothing yet everything; are words so contradictory, that they bespeak no sane understanding.
8. Again the saying, that I do not see what I see, but see something that is quite unseen; is so very inconsistent in itself, that it indicates no sanity of the mind.
9. From these I find thee an ignorant and unsteady lass still, and my frolicsome playmate as before; it is by way of jest that I speak so to you, as you jestingly said these things to me.