It serveth to restrain the
wicked and to protect the honest. While lying unborn within my mother's
thigh, I heard the doleful cries of my mother and other women of the
Bhrigu race who were then being exterminated by the Kshatriyas. Ye Pitris,
when those wretches of Kshatriyas began to exterminate the Bhrigus
together with unborn children of their race, it was then that wrath filled
my soul. My mother and the other women of our race, each in an advanced
state of pregnancy, and my father, while terribly alarmed, found not in
all the worlds a single protector. Then when the Bhrigu women found not a
single protector, my mother held me in one of her thighs. If there be a
punisher of crimes in the worlds no one in all the worlds would dare
commit a crime; if he findeth not a punisher, the number of sinners
becometh large. The man who having the power to prevent or punish sin doth
not do so knowing that a sin hath been committed, is himself defiled by
that sin. When kings and others, capable of protecting my fathers, protect
them not, postponing that duty preferring the pleasures of life, I have
just cause to be enraged with them. I am the lord of the creation, capable
of punishing its iniquity. I am incapable of obeying your command. Capable
of punishing this crime, if I abstain from so doing, men will once more
have to undergo a similar persecution. The fire of my wrath too that is
ready to consume the worlds, if repressed, will certainly consume by its
own energy my own self.
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