a true man in the world.  He that has wealth is regarded as a learned man.  If a person who hath no wealth desires to achieve a particular purpose, he meets with failure.  Wealth brings about accessions of wealth, like elephants capturing (wild) elephants.  Religious acts, pleasures, joy, courage, wrath, learning, and sense of dignity, all these proceed from wealth, O king!  From wealth one acquires family honour.  From wealth, one’s religious merit increases.  He that is without wealth hath neither this world, nor the next, O best of men!  The man that hath no wealth succeeds not in performing religious acts, for these latter spring from wealth, like rivers from a mountain.  He that is lean in respect of (his possession of) steeds and kine and servants and guests, is truly lean and not he whose limbs alone are so.  Judge truly, O king, and look at the conduct of the gods and the Danavas.  O king, do the gods ever wish for anything else than the slaughter of their kinsmen (the Asuras)?  If the appropriation of wealth belonging to others be not regarded as righteous, how, O monarch, will kings practise virtue on this earth?  Learned men have, in the Vedas, laid down this conclusion.  The learned have laid it down that kings should live, reciting every day the three Vedas, seeking to acquire wealth, and carefully performing sacrifices with the wealth thus acquired.  The gods, through internecine quarrels, have obtained footing in heaven.  When, the very gods have won their prosperity through internecine quarrels, what fault can there be in such quarrels?  The gods, thou seest, act in this way.  The eternal precepts of the Vedas also sanction it.  To learn, teach, sacrifice, and assist at other’s sacrifices,—­these are our principal duties.  The wealth that kings take from others becomes the means of their prosperity.  We never see wealth that has been earned without doing some injury to others.  It is even thus that kings conquer this world.  Having conquered, they call that wealth theirs, just as sons speak of the wealth of their sires as their own.  The royal sages that have gone to heaven have declared this to be the duty of kings.  Like water flowing on every direction from a swollen ocean, that wealth runs on every direction from the treasuries of kings.  This earth formerly belonged to king Dilipa, Nahusha, Amvarisha, and Mandhatri.  She now belongs to thee!  A great sacrifice, therefore, with profuse presents of every kind and requiring a vast heap of the earth’s produce, awaits thee.  If thou dost not perform that sacrifice, O king, then the sins of this kingdom shall all be thine.  Those subjects whose king performs a horse-sacrifice with profuse presents, become all cleansed and sanctified by beholding the ablutions at the end of the sacrifice.  Mahadeva himself, of universal form, in a great sacrifice requiring libations of all kinds of flesh, poured all creatures as sacrificial libations and then his own self.  Eternal is this auspicious path.  Its fruits are never destroyed.  This is the great path called Dasaratha.  Abandoning it, O king, to what other path wouldst thou betake thyself?’