At this discourtesy
shown to her husband, she burst out saying: - "Who
except you can be hostile to Siva, who is free from enmity and is the soul of all, whom
none can excel in this world, and who, being the dear self of embodied beings, knows no
favourite or otherwise? The most generous men feel inclined to magnify the smallest
virtues, but you discovered vice in there. It is no wonder that great men always censure
with intolerance those wicked people who hold that the body (itself) is the soul; Alas,
you, an unlucky person, hate that Siva of holy fame and inviolable command whose
disyllabic name (Siva), pronounced for even a single time in the course of conversation,
immediately destroys one’s sin! You revolt against that friend of all whose
lotus-feet shower blessings on the supplicating world Did Brahma and the gods, other than
yourself, who hold on their crests the (flowers) touched by his feet, not know that God
named Siva as an inauspicious being who lived with goblins on the cremation ground,
spreading out his matted hair and wearing the garlands, ashes and skulls of that place? If
incapable (of redress), one should leave the place by closing one’s ears when the
Lord (Siva), the protector of religion (dharma) is freely decried by men; but if capable,
one should tear out by force the denouncing tongues of the wicked and then give up
one’s own life-that is dharma. So, I shall no longer sustain the body produced
from you who censure the dark-throated (Nilakanta), be cause, as people say, the vomiting
out of the condemned food eaten through mistake leads to purification." |