Verse 17.5

Verse 17.5: “Those persons who practise dreadful austerity, not in accordance with the Shastra’s prescriptions, being dominated by hypocrisy and egotism and impelled by the force of their desires and passions: (93)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

(Now as regards) those that do not even know how to clear their throat (tune their vocal chords) in order to utter distinctly even the word ‘Shastras’ (Scriptures) and who are not prepared to permit the Shastra-knowing persons even to approach (touch) their periphery (i.e. who keep them at a safe distance); or those that grin and mouth (nātī vākuliyā) in mockery of their elders (seeing their acts), and scoff at the learned by indulging in snapping of their thumbs and fingers (ḍākuliyāṃvājavitī); those that follow religious austerities practised by the atheists in the conceit of their greatness and in the arrogance consequent on their possession of great riches; those that use the woodbill (koyatā) and take out flesh and blood from their own bodies and from those of others, and with these fill up to the brim the sacrificial pot, and pour it into the burning (sacrificial) receptacles or into the mouth of the Spirit of a deceased Brahmin (samandha): those that dedicate child-victims in fulfilment of the vows taken by them; those that perversely remain without food and observe complete fast for seven days at a time for securing a boon from some petty deities—such (men) sow the seed of torment to themselves and also to others in the Tamas field, and then the seed germinates and gives yield of the same sort.

Then such ones get reduced to the state of one, who finds himself in the sea and yet has neither the strength of arms to swim across, nor does he take to the use of a boat; or of a sick person, who is cross with the doctor and kicks out the medicine (offered), and then suffers the pangs due to the pain (of the disease); or of one who (being unable to take revenge) retaliates spitefully by removing his own eyes and getting thus blind, is compelled to embrace the rigorous vow (of confinement) in his own house; to such a state are reduced those demons that discard with scorn the Scriptures, and getting infatuated, wander about aimlessly through out-of-the-way tracts. They act as the desires for sense-objects dictate to them, and belabour others as directed by their wrath to be belaboured: not only that, but they bury me (who lives as the soul in the body-form) too deep under the boulder-heap in the form of miseries.