If he has given them the forest for their home, in vain has he provided luxuries and enjoyments. If they roam the roads bare-footed, in vain has he created vehicle of various kinds.

If they repose on the ground littered with grass and leaves, why does God take the trouble of fashioning comfortable beds? If God has assigned them an abode in the shade of spreading trees, in vain has he taken pains to build glittering palaces.

If these, most handsome and delicate boys, are attired in hermit’s dress and wear matted locks of hair, in vain has God fashioned ornaments and costumes of various kinds.

If they like on bulbs and roots and fruit alone, foods such as ambrosia exist in vain.’ But some people remarked: ‘Naturally charming as they are, these princes must have sprung to birth to their own will and were not made by God.

‘To the extent that the Vedas describe the words of God, one can comprehend them all with his ears and mind, but ransack if you will all the fourteen spheres and see – where is there such a man, and where such a woman? (In all the works of God of which the Vedas speak, that either the ears can hear, or the eyes see, or the mind fancy – search and examine all the fourteen worlds – there is no such man or woman.)

At their very sight God’s mind was enchanted and he set out to make their match. He toiled much, but nothing came of it (none could equal the pattern), and thus in spite he has brought these princes to the forest and hid them there.’

Others said, ‘We do not claim to know much, but we do account ourselves supremely blessed. They, too, are meritorious in our opinion who see these princes now, who have seen them and who will see them hereafter.’