1119.  There is another reason why one should not give way to intoxication of might and should not set at naught the eternal injunction against taking what belongs to another K.P.  Singha incorrectly translates this line.

1120.  Implying that such a man is always alive to his own faults.  He never thinks that others are guilty of an offence which he, in a moment of temptation, may have committed.

1121.  K.P.  Singha wrongly translates this line.

1122.  The construction is not at all difficult; yet both the vernacular translators have misunderstood it, the Burdwan version being thoroughly unintelligible.  This is only another form of the well-known saying—­’do to others as you would that they should do to you.’

1123.  The Burdwan translator gives an incorrect version of the second line:  yad is equivalent to yadi:  anyasya stands for anyam.  The genitive inflection is used for the accusative.  Tatah stands for tasmin implying aupapatye vishaye.  Kuryat is driggochari-kuryat.

1124.  The surplus should not be coveted for its own sake but for such use.

1125.  The second line is incorrectly rendered by K.P.  Singha.

1126.  Priyabhyupagatam is priyena praptam and not hinsaya.

1127.  I am not sure that I have understood the original correctly.  Nilakantha says that the sense intended to be conveyed is that Yudhishthira finds fault with Bhishma’s previous course on the indications of righteousness.

1128.  The argument, as explained by the commentator is this:  Bhishma has said that righteousness and its reverse arise from one’s acts producing happiness or misery to others, and that they both affect one’s future life in respect to the happiness and misery enjoyed or endured therein.  But living creatures, says Yudhishthira, are seen to take their births, exist, and die, of their own nature.  Nature, therefore, seems to be the efficient cause of birth, existence, and death, and not the declarations in the Srutis, consistent though those declarations be with considerations of felicity or the reverse.  The study of the Vedas, therefore, cannot alone lead to a knowledge of righteousness and its reverse.

1129.  Distress may be of infinite variety.  Derogation also from duty may, therefore, be of infinite variety.  It is impossible to note these derogations (justifiable in view of the degree of distress felt) in any code of morals, however comprehensive.

1130.  The commentator cites the example of Sudras listening to forbidden scriptures in expectation of merit.  They commit sin by such acts.  Then again high Brahmanas like Agastya, by cursing the denizens of the Dandaka forest, achieved great merit.  In persons universally called ordinary or even low, indications are observable of good behaviour, and in those acknowledged to be good and respectable, acts may be noticed that are not good.  That therefore, which is called the conduct of the good is extremely unascertainable.