Baal Kaanda
5 - Contrast between saints and the evil-minded
Chaupais
Description
The tales of sins and vices of the wicked, on the one hand, and of the virtues of the virtuous, on the other, are like boundless and unfathomable oceans. That is why I have enumerated only a few virtues and vices; for they cannot be acquired or discarded without being duly distinguished. The good as well as the vile, all have been brought into being by the Creator; it is the Vedas that have differentiated them by reckoning the merits of the former class and the demerits of the other. The Vedas, the Itihasas (such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) and the Puranas unanimously declare that the creation of Brahma (the Creator) is an intermixture of good and evil. It is characterized by pairs of opposites such as pain and pleasure, sin and merit, day and night, the good and the wicked, good birth and vile birth, demons and gods, the high and the low, nectar and poison, a happy life and death, Maya and Brahma, i.e., Matter and Spirit, the soul and God (the Lord of the universe), plenty and poverty, the pauper and the king, the sacred Kasi or Varanasi and Magadha or North Bihar (the accursed land), the holy Ganga the river of the celestials- and the unholy Karmanasa* (in Bihar), the desert land of Maravara (Western Rajapµutana and Sindha) and the rich soil of Malava, the Brahmana-who is a veritable god on earthó and the barbarian who feeds on the cow, heaven and hell, attachment and dispassion. The Vedas and other sacred books have sifted good from evil.