"You (use) Kusa-grass, sacrificial poles, straw and wood, you touch water in the evening and in the morning; thereby you injure living beings, and in your ignorance you commit sins again and again." (39)

'How should we sacrifice, O monk, and how avoid sinful actions? Tell us, ascetic, whom the Yakshas hold in honour, what do the clever ones declare to be the right method of sacrificing?' (40)

"Doing no injury to living beings of the six orders, abstaining from lying and from taking what is not freely given, renouncing property, women, pride, and deceit, men should live under self-restraint. (41)

"He who is well protected by the five Samvaras and is not attached to this life, who abandons his body , who is pure and does not care for his body, wins the great victory, the best of offerings." (42)

'Where is your fire, your fireplace, your sacrificial ladle? where the dried cowdung (used as fuel)? Without these things, what kind of priests can the monks be? What oblations do you offer to the fire? (43)

"Penance is my fire; life my fireplace; right exertion is my sacrificial ladle; the body the dried cowdung; Karman is my fuel; self-control, right exertion, and tranquillity are the oblations, praised by the sages, which I offer." (44)

'Where is your pond, and where the holy bathing-place? how do you make your ablutions or get rid of impurity? Tell us, O restrained monk whom the Yakshas hold in honour; we desire to learn it from you.' (45)

"The Law is my pond, celibacy my holy bathing-place, which is not turbid, and throughout clear for the soul ; there I make ablutions; pure, clean, and thoroughly cooled I get rid of hatred (or impurity). (46)

"The clever ones have discovered such bathing, it is the great bath praised by the seers, in which the great seers bathe, and, pure and clean, they obtain the highest place." (47)

Thus I say.

Footnotes