are not masters of their own weal or woe.  They go to heaven or hell urged by God Himself.  Like light straws dependent on strong winds, all creatures, O Bharatas, are dependent on God!  And God himself, pervading all creatures and engaged in acts right and wrong, moveth in the universe, though none can say This is God! This body with its physical attributes is only the means by which God—­the Supreme Lord of all maketh (every creature) to reap fruits that are good or bad.  Behold the power of illusion that hath been spread by God, who confounding with his illusion, maketh creatures slay their fellows!  Truth-knowing Munis behold those differently.  They appear to them in a different light, even like the rays of the Sun (which to ordinary eyes are only a pencil of light, while to eyes more penetrating seem fraught with the germs of food and drink).  Ordinary men behold the things of the earth otherwise.  It is God who maketh them all, adopting different processes in their creation and destruction.  And, O Yudhishthira, the Self-create Grandsire, Almighty God, spreading illusion, slayeth his creatures by the instrumentality of his creatures, as one may break a piece of inert and senseless wood with wood, or stone with stone, or iron with iron.  And the Supreme Lord, according to his pleasure, sporteth with His creatures, creating and destroying them, like a child with his toy (of soft earth).  O king, it doth seem to me that God behaveth towards his creatures like a father or mother unto them.  Like a vicious person, He seemeth to bear himself towards them in anger!  Beholding superior and well-behaved and modest persons persecuted, while the sinful are happy, I am sorely troubled.  Beholding this thy distress and the prosperity of Suyodhana, I do not speak highly of the Great Ordainer who suffereth such inequality!  O sir, what fruits doth the Great Ordainer reap by granting prosperity to Dhritarashtra’s son who transgresseth the ordinances, who is crooked and covetous, and who injureth virtue and religion!  If the act done pursueth the doer and none else, then certainly it is God himself who is stained with the sin of every act.  If however, the sin of an act done doth not attach to the doer, then (individual) might (and not God) is the true cause of acts, and I grieve for those that have no might!’”

SECTION XXXI

“Yudhishthira said, ’Thy speech, O Yajnaseni, is delightful, smooth and full of excellent phrases.  We have listened to it (carefully).  Thou speakest, however, the language of atheism.  O princess, I never act, solicitous of the fruits of my actions.  I give away, because it is my duty to give; I sacrifice because it is my duty to sacrifice!  O Krishna, I accomplish to the best of my power whatever a person living in domesticity should do, regardless of the fact whether those acts have fruits or not.  O thou of fair hips, I act virtuously, not from the