Chapter XIII - Vituperation of riches

Rama said:—

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It is opulence, Oh sage! that is reckoned a blessing here; it is even she that is the cause of our troubles and errors.

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She bears away as a river in the rainy season, all high-spirited simpletons overpowered by its current.

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Her daughters are anxieties fostered by many a malpractice, like the waves of a stream raised by the winds.

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She can never stand steady on her legs any where, but like a wretched woman who has burnt her feet, she limps from one place to another.

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Fortune like a lamp both burns and blackens its possessor, until it is extinguished by its own inflammation.

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She is unapproachable as princes and fools, and likewise as favourable as they to her adherents, without scanning their merits or faults.

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She begets only evils in them by their various acts (of profligacy), as good milk given to serpents, serves but to increase the poignancy of their poison.

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Men (by nature) are gentle and kind hearted to friends and strangers, until they are hardheartened by their riches, which like blasts of wind, serve to stiffen (the liquid) frost.

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As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave, the grateful, the mild and gentle, corrupted by riches.

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Riches do not conduce to one's happiness, but redound to his woe and destruction, as the plant aconite when fostered, hides in itself the fatal poison.

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A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a master wanting partiality, are the three rarities on earth.

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The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cavern of a dragon, and as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of the Vindhya mountain inhabited by fierce elephants.

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Riches like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of men, and like moon-beams brings to bloom the buds of their misery. They blow away the brightness of a fair prospect as a hurricane, and resemble a sea with huge surges (of disquiet).

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They bring upon us a cloud of fear and error, increase the poison of despondence and regret, and are like the dreadful snakes in the field of our choice.

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Fortune is (as a killing) frost to the bondsmen of asceticism, and as the night to the owls of libertinism; she is an eclipse to the moonlight of reason, and as moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of folly.

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She is as transitory as the Iris, and alike pleasant to view by the play of her colours; she is as fickle as the lightning, which vanishes no sooner it appears to sight. Hence none but the ignorant have reliance in her.

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She is as unsteady as a well born damsel following a base-born man to the words; and like a (deceptive) mirage that tempts the run-aways to fall to it as the doe.

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Unsteady as the wave, she is never steady in any place; (but is ever wavering to all sides) like the flickering flame of a lamp. So her leaning is known to nobody.

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She like the lioness is ever prompt in fighting, and like the leader of elephants favourable to her partizans. She is as sharp as the blade of a sword (to cut off all obstacles), and is the patroness of sharp-witted sharpers.

20. [Sanskrit available]
I see no felicity in uncivil prosperity, which is full of treachery, and replete with every kind of danger and trouble.

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It is pity that prosperity, like a shameless wench will again lay hold on a man, after being abandoned by him in his association with (her rival) Poverty.

22. [Sanskrit available]
What is she with all her loveliness and attraction of human hearts, but momentary thing obtained by all manner of evil means, and resembling at best a flower shrub, growing out of a cave inhabited by a snake, and beset by reptiles all about its stem.