Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/29

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BOOK I, 41-53.
9

47. 'Yea, the son of Sarasvatî[1] proclaimed that lost Veda which they had never seen in former ages, — Vyâsa rehearsed that in many forms, which Varishtha helpless could not compile;

48. ‘The voice of Vâlmiki uttered its poetry which the great seer Kyavana could not compose; and that medicine which Atri never invented the wise son of Atri[2] proclaimed after him;

49. ‘That Brahmanhood which Kusika never attained, — his son, O king, found out the means to gain it; (so) Sagara made a bound for the ocean, which even the IkshvAkus had not fixed before him.

50. ‘Ganaka attained a power of instructing the twice-born in the rules of Yoga which none other had ever reached[3]; and the famed feats of the grandson of Sûra[4] (Krishna) Sûra and his peers were powerless to accomplish.

51. ‘Therefore it is not age nor years which are the criterion; different persons win pre-eminence in the world at different places; those mighty exploits worthy of kings and sages, when left undone by the ancestors, have been done by the sons.’

52. The king, being thus consoled and congratulated by those well-trusted Brahmans, dismissed from his mind all unwelcome suspicion and rose to a still higher degree of joy;

53. And well-pleased he gave to those most excellent of the twice-born rich treasures with all

  1. The Vishnu Pur. (III, 3) says that Sârasvata arranged the Vedas in the ninth age, as Vasishtha in the eighth.
  2. Âtreya is the proclaimer of the Karaka-samhitâ.
  3. Cf. Khandogya Upan. V, 3, 7.
  4. Read Saureh for Sauraih.