Verse 43

⁴³Householders with no children have probably worshipped the god well, since they never meet the misery a bad child brings, which is hard to carry. ⁴⁴From it comes a rotten name, and much wrongdoing for men; from it comes quarrelling with everyone, and from it an anxiety that does not end. ⁴⁵What learned man would think much of a thing called offspring, when it binds him in confusion and a house becomes a giver of trouble for its sake? ⁴⁶I hold a bad child better than a good one, for a good one is a place of grief. A bad one makes a man weary of his house, and a house is where the troubles gather. ⁴⁷So the king, weary in mind, rose at midnight out of that house of great prosperity. He had not slept. Seen by nobody, he left Vena's mother sleeping and went.

⁴⁸When the people knew their lord had grown weary and gone, the household priest, the ministers, the friends and the rest searched the earth for him, sick with grief, as poor yogins search for the Person hidden within. ⁴⁹They could not find the track of the lord of the people, and their effort broke. They came back to the city, bowed to the sages gathered there, and told them in tears, son of Puru, that their master was lost.