Like a wooden doll, moving its limbs in the hands of a man, so do all creatures move in the Creator’s hands.  Man is like a bird on a string, like a bead on a cord.  As a bull is led by the nose, so man follows the will of the Creator; he never is a creature of free will ([=a]tm[=a]dhina).  Every man goes to heaven or to hell, as he is sent by the Lord’s will.  God himself, occupied with noble or with wicked acts, moves about among all created things, an unknown power (not known as ’this one’).  The blessed God, who is self-created, the great forefather (prapit[=a]maha), plays with his creatures just as a boy plays with toys, putting them together and destroying them as he chooses.  Not like a father is God to His creatures; He acts in anger.  When I see the good distressed, the ignoble happy, I blame the Creator who permits this inequality.  What reward does God get that he sends happiness to this sinful man (thy oppressor)?  If it be true that only the individual that does the act is pursued by the fruit of that act (karma doctrine) then the Lord who has done this act is defiled by this base act of His.  If, on the other hand, the act that one has done does not pursue and overtake the one that has done it, then the only agency on earth is brute force (this is the only power to be respected)—­and I grieve for them that are without it!”

To this plea, which in its acknowledgment of the Creator as the highest god, no less than in its doubtful admission of the karma doctrine, is of peculiar interest, the king replies with a refutation no less worthy of regard:  “Thy argument is good, clear and smooth, but it is heterodox (n[=a]stikyam).  I have sacrificed and practiced virtue not for the sake of reward, but because it was right.  I give what I ought to give, and sacrifice as I should.  That is my only idea in connection with religious observances.  There is no virtue in trying to milk virtue.  Do not doubt.  Do not be suspicious of virtue.  He that doubts God or duty goes to hell (confusion), but he that does his duty and is free from doubt goes to heaven (becomes immortal).  Doubt not scriptural authority.  Duty is the saving ship.  No other gets to heaven.  Blame not the Lord Creator, who is the highest god.  Through His grace the faithful gets immortality.  If religious observances were without fruit the universe would go to destruction.  People would not have been good for so many ages if there had been no reward for it.  This is a mystery of the gods.  The gods are full of mystery and illusion.”

The queen, for all the world like that wise woman in the Upanishads, whose argument, as we showed in a preceding chapter, is cut short not by counter-argument, but by the threat that if she ask too much her head will fall off, recants her errors at this rebuke, and in the following section, which evidently is a later addition, takes back what she has said.  Her new expression of belief she cites as the opinion of Brihaspati