it gives of unknown and incomprehensible things.  He who is acquainted with the words of persons that are learned, that are of cleansed souls, and that have attained to a state of Brahma, succeeds in obtaining great honours.  When one seeth creatures of infinite diversity to be all one and the same and to be but diversified emanations from the same essence, one is then said to have attained Brahma.[52] Those who reach this high state of culture attain to that supreme and blissful end, and not they who are without knowledge, or they who are of little and narrow souls, or they who are bereft of understanding, or they who are without penances.  Indeed, everything rests on the (cultivated) understanding!’”

SECTION XVIII

Vaisampayana said, “When Yudhishthira, after saying these words, became silent, Arjuna, afflicted by that speech of the king, and burning with sorrow and grief, once more addressed his eldest brother, saying, ’People recite this old history, O Bharata, about the discourse between the ruler of the Videhas and his queen.  That history has reference to the words which the grief-stricken spouse of the ruler of the Videhas had said to her lord when the latter, abandoning his kingdom, had resolved to lead a life of mendicancy.  Casting off wealth and children and wives and precious possessions of various kinds and the established path for acquiring religious merit and fire itself.[53] King Janaka shaved his head (and assumed the garb of a mendicant).  His dear spouse beheld him deprived of wealth, installed in the observance of the vow of mendicancy, resolved to abstain from inflicting any kind of injury on others, free from vanity of every kind, and prepared to subsist upon a handful of barley fallen off from the stalk and to be got by picking the grains from crevices in the field.  Approaching her lord at a time when no one was with him, the queen, endued with great strength of mind, fearlessly and in wrath, told him these words fraught with reason:  ’Why hast thou adopted a life of mendicancy, abandoning thy kingdom full of wealth and corn?  A handful of fallen off barley cannot be proper for thee.  Thy resolution tallies not with thy acts,[54] since abandoning thy large kingdom thou covetest, O king, a handful of grain!  With this handful of barley, O king, wilt thou succeed in gratifying thy guests, gods.  Rishis and Pitris?  This thy labour, therefore, is bootless.  Alas, abandoned by all these, viz., gods, guest and Pitris, thou leadest a life, of wandering mendicancy, O king, having cast off all action.  Thou wert, before this, the supporter of thousands of Brahmanas versed in the three Vedas and of many more besides.  How canst thou desire to beg of them thy own food today?  Abandoning thy blazing prosperity, thou castest thy eyes around like a dog (for his food).  Thy mother hath today been made sonless by thee, and thy spouse, the princess of Kosala, a widow.  These