Devanagari
आत्मवृत्तमविज्ञाय कत्थसे बहु भिक्षुकि ।
किं न प्रतीक्षसेऽस्माकं गृहान् बलिभुजो यथा ॥ १६ ॥
Verse text
ātma-vṛttam avijṣāya
katthase bahu bhikṣuki
kiṁ na pratīkṣase ’smākaṁ
gṛhān balibhujo yathā
Synonyms
ātma
—
vṛttam — one’s own position
;
avijṣāya
—
without understanding
;
katthase
—
you are talking madly
;
bahu
—
so much
;
bhikṣuki
—
beggar
;
kim
—
whether
;
na
—
not
;
pratīkṣase
—
you wait
;
asmākam
—
our
;
gṛhān
—
at the house
;
balibhujaḥ
—
crows
;
yathā
—
like .
Translation
You beggar, since you don’t understand your position, why should you unnecessarily talk so much? Don’t all of you wait at our house, depending on us for your livelihood like crows?
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
O beggar! You boast profusely without understanding your position. Do you brāhmaṇas not wait at our house like crows?
Bali-bhujaḥ means crows.
Purport
Crows have no independent life; they fully depend on the remnants of foodstuffs thrown by householders into the garbage tank. Therefore, because a
brāhmaṇa
depends on his disciples, when Śarmiṣṭhā was heavily rebuked by Devayānī she charged Devayānī with belonging to a family of crowlike beggars. It is the nature of women to fight verbally at even a slight provocation. As we see from this incident, this has been their nature for a long, long time.