nights are ceaselessly going away, taking with them
the good and bad incidents that befall man, that depend
on destiny, and that are unexpected by him. If
the fruits of man’s acts were not dependent
on other circumstances, then one would obtain whatever
object one would desire. Even men of restrained
senses, of cleverness, and of intelligence, if destitute
of acts, never succeed in earning any fruits.[1771]
Others, though destitute of intelligence and unendued
with accomplishments of any kind, and who are really
the lowest of men, are seen, even when they do not
long after success, to be crowned with the fruition
of all their desires.[1772] Some one else, who is always
ready to do acts of injury to all creatures, and who
is engaged in deceiving all the world, is seen to
wallow in happiness. Some one that sits idly,
obtains great prosperity; while another, by exerting
earnestly, is seen to miss desirable fruits almost
within his reach.[1773] Do thou ascribe it as one
of the faults of man! The vital seed, originating
in one’s nature from sight of one person, goes
to another person. When imparted to the womb,
it sometimes produces an embryo and sometimes fails.
When sexual congress fails, it resembles a mango tree
that puts forth a great many flowers without, however,
producing a single fruit.[1774] As regards some men
who are desirous of having offspring and who, for the
fruition of their object, strive heartily (by worshipping
diverse deities), they fail to procreate an embryo
in the womb. Some person again, who fears the
birth of an embryo as one fears a snake of virulent
poison, finds a long-lived son born unto him and who
seems to be his own self come back to the stages through
which he has passed. Many persons with ardent
longing for offspring and cheerless on that account,
after sacrificing to many deities and undergoing severe
austerities, at last beget children, duly borne for
ten long months (in the wombs of their spouses), that
prove to be veritable wretches of their race.
Others, who have been obtained through virtue of such
blessed rites and observances, at once obtain wealth
and grain and diverse other sources of enjoyment earned
and stored by their sires. In an act of congress,
when two persons of opposite sexes come into contact
with one another, the embryo takes birth in the womb,
like a calamity afflicting the mother. Very soon
after the suspension of the vital breaths, other physical
forms possess that embodied creature whose gross body
has been destroyed but whose acts have all been performed
with that gross body made of flesh and phlegm.[1775]
Upon the dissolution of the body, another body, which
is as much destructible as the one that is destroyed,
is kept ready for the burnt and destroyed creature
(to migrate into) even as one boat goes to another
for transferring to itself the passengers of the other.[1776]
In consequence of an act of congress, a drop of the
vital seed, that is inanimate, is cast into the womb.
I ask thee, through whose or what care is the embryo