4. Ráma, he became as distracted as you had been before; and discharged his daily rituals, at the humble request and repeated solicitations of his attending servants.
5. He was as inexcitable and cold blooded, as a religious recluse; he desisted from the enjoyments of his princely pleasures, and abstained also from his usual food.
6. He gave his homage with large largesses of lands and gifts of gold and kine to the gods, Brahmans and his relatives also.
7. He went on performing the austerities of the religious rites, and the rigorous ceremonies of the chandáryana and others; he travelled through wilds and deserts and inhabited tracts, to his pilgrimages far and near.
8. Yet he found nowhere the consolation of his mind, which he kept seeking all-abouts; as a miner digs the sterile soil in quest of some mineral, where there is no such thing to be found.
9. He was pining away under the ardour of his anxiety, as it were under the fiery heat of the sun; in search of some remedy for his worldly cares, which hunted him incessantly both by day and night.
10. Being absorbed in his thoughts, he sought not for aught of the poisonous pleasures of his realm; and with the meekness of his spirit and mind, he did not look at the grand estate which lay before him.
11. It happened one day, as he was sitting with his beloved princess reclining on his lap; that he spoke to her as follows, in his mellifluent speech.
12. Sikhidhwaja said:—I have long tasted the pleasures of my realm, and enjoyed the sweet and bitter of my large property and landed possessions. I am now grown as weary of them, as they are both the same and stale to me.