Mahābhārata

M. N. Dutt: Bhishma said If one does good deeds or causes others to do them, he should then expect to attain to the merits of virtue; likewise if one does evil deeds and causes others to do them, he should never expect to attain to the merits of virtue.

M. N. Dutt: At all times, it is Time, which entering the understanding of all creatures, sets them to deeds of virtue or sin and then confers happiness or misery upon them.

M. N. Dutt: When a person, seeing the fruits of virtue understands virtue to be superior, it is then that he inclines towards virtue and puts faith in il. One, however, whose understanding is not firm, cannot place faith in it.

M. N. Dutt: As regards faith in virtue, it is this. To place faith in virtue is the mark of the wisdom of all persons. One, who is acquainted with what should be done and what should not be done, with a view to opportuneness, should, with care and devotion, do what is right.

M. N. Dutt: Those virtuous men, who have in this life been blessed with riches acting of their own accord, take particular care of their souls so that they may not, in their next lives, have to take birth as persons with the quality of darkness predominating in them.

M. N. Dutt: Time can never make the cause of misery. One should, therefore, know that the soul which is virtuous is certainly pure.

M. N. Dutt: As regards sin, it may be said that, even when it is very great it is incapable of even touching virtue which is always protected by time and which shines like a burning fire.

M. N. Dutt: These are the two results achieved by virtue, viz., the purity of the soul and unsusceptibility of being touched by iniquity Indeed virtue is fraught with victory. Its effulgence is so great that it lights up the three worlds.

M. N. Dutt: A wise man cannot catch holds of a sinful person and forcibly make him pious. When seriously urged to act piously the sinful only act with hypocrisy, moved by fear.

M. N. Dutt: Even the righteous among the Shudras never betake themselves to such hypocrisy under the pretext that persons of the Shudra order are not permitted to live according to any of the four prescribed modes.

M. N. Dutt: I shall tell you particularly what the duties truly are of the four castes. So far as their bodies concerned, the individuals, belonging to all the four casts, have five primal elements for heir constituent ingredients; they are all the same substance in this matter. are

M. N. Dutt: For all that, their practices relating to life or the world and the duties of virtue, vary despite these distinctions, and sufficient liberty of action is left to them by which all individuals may attain to an equality of condition.

M. N. Dutt: The regions of happiness which represent the results or rewards of virtue are not eternal, for they are destined to come to an end. Virtue, however, is eternal When the cause is eternal, why is the effect not so? The answer to this is as follows. Only that virtue is eternal which is not prompted by the desire of fruit or reward.

M. N. Dutt: All men are equal as regards their physical organism. All of them, again, have souls which are equal in nature. When dissolution comes, all else dissolves away. What remains is the desire for acquiring virtue. That, indeed, reappears (in next life) of itself.

M. N. Dutt: When such is the result, the inequality of condition, seen among human beings, cannot be considered in any way anomalous. So also, it is seen that those crcatures that belong to the intermediate orders of existence are equally subject, about their acis, to the influence of example.

M. N. Dutt: Vaishampayana said Desirous of acquiring the merit which destroys sins that perpetuator of Kuru's race, viz., Yudhishthira the son of Pandu, questioned Bhishma who was lying on a bed of arrows saying.