times).  As animals and other things are necessary for sacrifices, as sacrifices are for purifying the heart, and as animals, sacrifices, and purity of the heart are all for final emancipation, even so policy and chastisement exist for the treasury, the treasury exists for the army, and policy and treasury and army all the three exist for vanquishing foes and protecting or enlarging the kingdom.  I shall here cite an example illustrating the true ways of morality.  A large tree is cut down for making of it a sacrificial stake.  In cutting it, other trees that stand in its way have also to be cut down.  These also, in falling down, kill others standing on the spot.  Even so they that stand in the way of making a well-filled treasury must have to be slain.  I do not see how else success can be had.  By wealth, both the worlds, viz., this and the other, can be had, as also Truth and religious merit.  A person without wealth is more dead than alive.  Wealth for the performance of sacrifices should be acquired by every means.  The demerit that attaches to an act done in a season of distress is not equal to that which attaches to the same act if done at other times, O Bharata!  The acquisition of wealth and its abandonment cannot both be possibly seen in the same person, O king!  I do not see a rich man in the forest.  With respect to every wealth that is seen in this world, every one contends with every one else, saying, ’This shall be mine,’ ‘This shall be mine!’ This is nothing, O scorcher of foes, that is so meritorious for a king as the possession of a kingdom.  It is sinful for a king to oppress his subjects with heavy impositions at ordinary times.  In a season, however, of distress, it is quite different.  Some acquire wealth by gifts and sacrifices; some who have a liking for penances acquire wealth by penances; some acquire it by the aid of their intelligence and cleverness.  A person without wealth is said to be weak, while he that has wealth become powerful.  A man of wealth may acquire everything.  A king that has well-filled treasury succeeds in accomplishing everything.  By his treasury a king may earn religious merit, gratify his desire for pleasure, obtain the next world, and this also.  The treasury, however, should be filled by the aid of righteousness and never by unrighteous practices, such, that is, as pass for righteous in times of distress.

SECTION CXXXI

(Apaddharmanusasana Parva)

“Yudhishthira said, ’What, besides this, should be done by a king that is weak and procrastinating, that does not engage in battle from anxiety for the lives of his friends, that is always under the influence of fear, and that cannot keep his counsels secret?  What, indeed, should that king do whose cities and kingdom have been partitioned and appropriated by foes, who is divested of wealth, who is incapable (through such poverty) of honouring his friends and attaching them to himself, whose ministers are disunited or bought over by his enemies, who is obliged to stand in the face of foes, whose army has dwindled away, and whose heart has been agitated by some strong enemy?’