“Vali said, ’When calamities have oppressed me, O Sakra, what dost thou gain by such brag now?  Today I behold thee, O Purandara, stand before me with the thunderbolt upraised in thy hand!  Formerly, however, thou couldst not bear thyself so.  Now thou hast by some means gained that power.  Indeed, who else than thou could utter such cruel speeches?  That person who, though able to punish, shows compassion towards a heroic foe vanquished and brought under his sway, is truly a very superior individual.  When two persons fight, victory in the battle is certainly dubious.  One of the two certainly becomes victorious, and the other becomes vanquished.  O chief of the deities, let not thy disposition be such!  Do not imagine that thou hast become the sovereign of all creatures after having conquered all with thy might and prowess!  That we have become so is not, O Sakra, the result of any act of ours.[855] That thou hast become so, O wielder of the thunderbolt, is not the result of any act of thine.  What I am now thou wilt be in the future.  Do not disregard me, thinking that thou hast done an exceedingly difficult feat.  A person obtains happiness and misery one after another in course of Time.  Thou hast, O Sakra, obtained the sovereignty of the universe in course of Time but not in consequence of any especial merit in thee.  It is Time that leads me on in his course.  That same Time leads thee also onward.  It is for this that I am not what thou art today, and thou also art not what we are!  Dutiful services done to parents, reverential worship of deities, due practice of any good quality,—­none of these can bestow happiness on any one.  Neither knowledge, nor penances, nor gifts, nor friends, nor kinsmen can rescue one that is afflicted by Time.  Men are incapable of averting, by even a thousand means, an impending calamity.  Intelligence and strength go for nothing in such cases.  There is no rescuer of men that are afflicted by Time’s course.  That thou, O Sakra, regarded thyself as the actor lies at the root of all sorrow.  If the ostensible doer of an act is the real actor thereof, that doer then would not himself be the work of some one else (viz., the Supreme Being).  Hence, because the ostensible doer is himself the product of another, that another is the Supreme Being above whom there is nothing higher.  Aided by Time I had vanquished thee.  Aided by Time thou hast vanquished me.  It is Time that is the mover of all beings that move.  It is Time that destroys all beings.  O Indra, in consequence of thy intelligence being of the vulgar species thou seest not that destruction awaits all things.  Some, indeed, regard thee highly as one that has acquired by his own acts the sovereignty of the universe.  For all that, how can one like us that know the course of the world, indulge in grief in consequence of having been afflicted by Time, or suffer our understanding to be stupefied, or yield to the influence of error?  Shall my understanding