“Bhishma said, ’Hear, O King, what the foundation is of sin.  Covetousness alone is a great destroyer (of merit and goodness).  From covetousness proceeds sin.  It is from this source that sin and irreligiousness flow, together with great misery.  This covetousness is the spring of also all the cunning and hypocrisy in the world.  It is covetousness that makes men commit sin.  From covetousness proceeds wrath; from covetousness flows lust, and it is from covetousness that loss of judgment, deception, pride, arrogance, and malice, as also vindictiveness, shamelessness, loss of prosperity, loss of virtue, anxiety, and infamy spring, miserliness, cupidity, desire for every kind of improper act, pride of birth, pride of learning, pride of beauty, pride of wealth, pitilessness for all creatures, malevolence towards all, mistrust in respect of all, insincerity towards all, appropriation of other people’s wealth, ravishment of other people’s wives, harshness of speech, anxiety, propensity to speak ill of others, violent craving for the indulgence of lust, gluttony, liability to premature death, violent propensity towards malice, irresistible liking for falsehood, unconquerable appetite for indulging in the passions, insatiable desire for indulging the ear, evil-speaking, boastfulness, arrogance, non-doing of duties, rashness, and perpetration of every kind of evil act,—­all these proceed from covetousness.  In life, men are unable, whether infants or youth or adults, to abandon covetousness.  Such is the nature of covetousness that it never decays even with the decay of life.  Like the ocean that can never be filled by the constant discharge of even innumerable rivers of immeasurable depths, covetousness is incapable of being gratified by acquisitions to any extent.  The covetousness, however, which is never gratified by acquisitions and satiated by the accomplishment of desires, that which is not known in its real nature by the gods, the Gandharvas, the Asuras, the great snakes, and, in fact, by all classes of beings, that irresistible passion, along with that folly which invites the heart to the unrealities of the world, should ever be conquered by a person of cleansed soul.  Pride, malice, slander, crookedness, and incapacity to hear other people’s good, are vices, O descendant of Kuru, that are to be seen in persons of uncleansed soul under the domination of covetousness.  Even persons of great learning who bear in their minds all the voluminous scriptures, and who are competent to dispel the doubts of others, show themselves in this respect to be of weak understanding and feel great misery in consequence of this passion.  Covetous men are wedded to envy and anger.  They are outside the pale of good behaviour.  Of crooked hearts, the speeches they utter are sweet.  They resemble, therefore, dark pits whose mouths are covered with grass.  They attire themselves in the hypocritical cloak of religion.  Of low minds, they rob the world, setting up (if need be) the standard of religion