Verse 17

¹⁷Rising and setting, that sun carries off the life of men, all but the moment that is spent in talk of him whose renown is highest. ¹⁸Do the trees not live? Do the bellows not breathe? Do the other beasts about the village not eat, and not make water? ¹⁹A man praised by dogs and dung-eating pigs and camels and asses is a beast himself, if the name of the elder brother of Gada has never once come along the path of his ear. ²⁰Those cups of a man's ears which do not hear the strides of the wide-strider are holes in the ground, Suta, and nothing more; and the tongue that does not sing along with the songs of him who is widely sung is no true tongue, but a frog's.

²¹The head is only a burden, though a silken turban and a crown be set upon it, if it will not bow to Mukunda. The hands are a dead man's hands, though gold bracelets flash on them, if they do Hari no service.