noble tree cut down, better to see a fertile plain parched by
long- drought; it is not good to see an age-wrecked human

-frame. Whom not the mig-htiest foes could conquer in the

-field of battle, who pierced an unchecked path through the
very mountains ; behold how easily they are over-mastered
by weak old age. I have not the courage to face it, 0 Muni !

<(! cannot understand how grown up men should hope and
try, like little children, to grasp and press sweet tastes from
mere glassed images of fruits. Alas ! even the false paints of
these images, the forms and colours that attract the infant's
hand, even they shrink and shrivel up and disappear beneath
the burning touch of Time the Ruthless. Naught is there in
the worlds that Time doth not devour. Truly is it the Ishvara
of all Ishvaras, God of all gods. None is beyond its sway.
We cannot trace the limits of its vast dominion. We try to
comprehend and compass it within a year ; but see^ it stretches
back behind and on before, as the Great Yuga (1); when we
calculate the limits of the Yuga, it once more advances and
recedes into the Kalpa(3), and yet again it swells into the
Maha-Kalpa, endlessly. Whatever there is of the Beautiful,
whatever there is of the Good, whatever there is of the Firm
and the Weighty, be it Sumeru's(3) self, hopeless and helpless it
disappears in the ever insatiate maw of Time. The pitiless, the
hard, the cruel, the rough, the miserly, the mean—these too are
all equally good meat for it. Aho ! the wondrous perseverance
of this Gardener ! Ever is he growing all these fruit-like
worlds, and ever is he eating them. Countless are the plants^
planets, and stars and comets, in his garden ; Brahmas are their
roots ; Devas are their branches ; the Loka"palas(4) are the

(1) Four yngag, or ages, wlnioti make up a Maha-ynga of 4,320,000
years. (2) A kalpa is a thousand Maha-yngas, or a "day of Brah.ma."
"3J (3) Same as M^rn ; see p. 5 8U3?ra.

(4) The eight Regents of the world, one on guard at eaoh of the
four points of the compass and the intermediate points-