11. She also was as reserved to show her consummate learning to her unenlightened husband; as a Brahman declines to show his secret rites to a vile sudra. 12. Ráma said:--If it was impossible, sir, for the seeress of consummate wisdom to communicate her knowledge to her husband Sikhidhwaja, with all her endeavours to enlighten him on the subject; how can it be possible for others, to be conversant in spiritual knowledge in any other means. 13. Vasishtha answered:--Ráma, it is obedience to the rule of attending to the precepts of the preceptor, joined with the intelligence of the pupil, which is the only means of gaining instruction. 14. The hearing of sermon nor the observance of any religious rite, is of any efficacy towards the knowledge of the soul; unless one will employ his own soul, to have the light of the supreme soul shine upon it. It is the spirit alone that can know the spirit, as it is the serpent only that can trace out the path of another serpent. 15. Ráma rejoined:--If such is the course of the world, that we can learn nothing without the instruction of our preceptors; then tell me, O sage! how the precepts of the wise lead to our spiritual knowledge also. 16. Vasishtha replied:--Hear me Ráma, relate to you a tale to this effect. There lived an old Kiráta of yore, who was miserly in his conduct as he was rich in his possessions of wealth and grains. He dwelt with his family by the side of the Vindhyan woods, as a poor Brahman lives apart from his kith and kin. 17. He happened to pass by his native forest at one time, and slip a single _couri_ from his purse, which fell in a grassy furze and was lost under the grass. 18. He ran on every side, and beat at the bush for three days to find out his lost _couri_, and impelled by his niggardliness to leave no fallen leaf unturned over the ground. 19. As he searched and turned about, he ran and turned it ever in his mind, saying:--Ah! this single _couri_ would make four by its commerce, and that would bring me eight in time, and this would make a hundred and a thousand, and more and more by repetition, so I have lost a treasure in this. 20. Thus he counted over and over, over the gains he would gain, and sighed as often at the loss he did sustain; and took into no account of the rustic peasantry on his foolish penury. 21. At the end of the third day he came across a rich jewel, as brilliant as the bright moon in the same forest; which compensated for the loss of his paltry _couri_ by a thousand fold. 22. He returned gladly with his great gain to his homely dwelling, and was highly delighted with the thought of keeping off poverty for ever from his door. (The word _Kerate_ is commonly used for Kiráta--the miser). 23. Now as the Kiráta was quite satisfied, with his unexpected gain of the great treasure, in the search of his trifling _couri_; and passed his days without any care or fear of the changeful world.