9. He understood her as no other than his young princess and the mistress of his house, and skilled only in the arts of coquetry and house wifery (and quite ignorant of higher things because the ladies of India were barred from spiritual knowledge).
10. Until this time the prince had been ignorant of the qualifications of the princess Chúdálá, and knew not that she had made her progress in the spiritual science, as a young student makes his proficiency in the different branches of learning.
11. She also was as reserved to show her consummate learning to her unenlightened husband; as a Brahman declines to show his secret rites to a vile sudra.
12. Ráma said:—If it was impossible, sir, for the seeress of consummate wisdom to communicate her knowledge to her husband Sikhidhwaja, with all her endeavours to enlighten him on the subject; how can it be possible for others, to be conversant in spiritual knowledge in any other means.
13. Vasishtha answered:—Ráma, it is obedience to the rule of attending to the precepts of the preceptor, joined with the intelligence of the pupil, which is the only means of gaining instruction.
14. The hearing of sermon nor the observance of any religious rite, is of any efficacy towards the knowledge of the soul; unless one will employ his own soul, to have the light of the supreme soul shine upon it. It is the spirit alone that can know the spirit, as it is the serpent only that can trace out the path of another serpent.
15. Ráma rejoined:—If such is the course of the world, that we can learn nothing without the instruction of our preceptors; then tell me, O sage! how the precepts of the wise lead to our spiritual knowledge also.
16. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me Ráma, relate to you a tale to this effect. There lived an old Kiráta of yore, who was miserly in his conduct as he was rich in his possessions of wealth and grains. He dwelt with his family by the side of the Vindhyan woods, as a poor Brahman lives apart from his kith and kin.
17. He happened to pass by his native forest at one time, and slip a single couri from his purse, which fell in a grassy furze and was lost under the grass.
18. He ran on every side, and beat at the bush for three days to find out his lost couri, and impelled by his niggardliness to leave no fallen leaf unturned over the ground.