Text 16
ātma-vṛttam avijñāya
katthase bahu bhikṣuki
kiṁ na pratīkṣase ’smākaṁ
gṛhān balibhujo yathā
ātma-vṛttam — one’s own position; avijñāya — 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.
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?
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.