with creepers and trees.  About the twigs of the tree (that stood at the mouth of the pit), roved many bees of frightful forms, employed from before in drinking the honey gathered in their comb about which they swarmed in large numbers.  Repeatedly they desired, O bull of Bharatas race, to taste that honey which though sweet to all creatures could, however, attract children only.  The honey (collected in the comb) fell in many jets below.  The person who was hanging in the pit continually drank those jets.  Employed, in such a distressful situation, in drinking that honey, his thirst, however, could not be appeased.  Unsatiated with repeated draughts, the person desired for more.  Even then, O king, he did not become indifferent to life.  Even there, the man continued to hope for existence.  A number of black and white rats were eating away the roots of that tree.  There was fear from the beasts of prey, from that fierce woman on the outskirts of that forest, from that snake at the bottom of the well, from that elephant near its top, from the fall of the tree through the action of the rats, and lastly from those bees flying about for tasting the honey.  In that plight he continued to dwell, deprived of his senses, in that wilderness, never losing at any time the hope of prolonging his life.”

6

“Dhritarashtra said, Alas, great was the distress of that person and very painful his mode of life!  Tell me, O first of speakers, whence was his attachment to life and whence his happiness?  Where is that region, so unfavourable to the practice of virtue, in which that person resides?  Oh, tell me how will that man be freed from all those great terrors?  Tell me all this!  We shall then exert ourselves properly for him.  My compassion has been greatly moved by the difficulties that lie in the way of his rescue!

“Vidura said, They that are conversant, O monarch, with the religion of moksha cite this as a simile.  Understanding this properly, a person may attain to bliss in the regions hereafter.  That which is described as the wilderness is the great world.  The inaccessible forest within it is the limited sphere of ones own life.  Those that have been mentioned as beasts of prey are the diseases (to which we are subject).  That woman of gigantic proportions residing in the forest is identified by the wise with Decrepitude which destroys complexion and beauty.  That which has been spoken of as the pit is the body or physical frame of embodied creatures.  The huge snake dwelling in the bottom of that pit is time, the destroyer of all embodied creatures.  It is, indeed, the universal destroyer.  The cluster of creepers growing in that pit and attached to whose spreading stems the man hangeth down is the desire for life which is cherished by every creature.  The six-faced elephant, O king, which proceeds towards the tree standing at the mouth of the pit is spoken of as the year.  Its six faces are the seasons and its twelve feet are the twelve months.  The