। ॥ २६७ ॥
In plain words
A man lies wrapped in the thick dark of sleep. In the dream a snake has him, swallowing him whole — he sees it happen, right there in front of him — and he screams in terror, on and on: I'm killed, I'm finished! Then a friend he trusts slaps him awake with an open palm and asks what happened. And the man says it himself, without being argued into it: nothing. Nothing happened at all. So tell me — that cry of his, what was it ever about?
Close to the Sanskrit
A person, indeed, enveloped in the dense darkness of sleep, having clearly seen himself in a dream seized by a snake or the like, cries out abundantly out of terror, 'I am killed!' — and then, awakened by a trusted friend, struck with the palm of the hand and questioned, he himself says, 'Nothing at all.' That utterance of his — what would it have been about? Tell me.