Book 5 Chapter II Paragraph 11
Wikisource / R. Shamasastry (1915) · Book 5 - The Conduct of Courtiers / Chapter II · Verse Paragraph 11
Sanskrit Original
Or spies may call upon spectators to see a serpent with numberless heads in a well connected with a subterranean passage and collect fees from them for the sight. Or they may place in a borehole made in the body of an image of a serpent, or in a hole in the corner of a temple, or in the hollow of an ant-hill, a cobra, which is, by diet, rendered unconscious, and call upon credulous spectators to see it (on payment of a certain amount of fee). As to persons who are not by nature credulous, spies may sprinkle over or give a drink of, such sacred water as is mixed with anasthetic ingredients and attribute their insensibility to the curse of gods. Or by causing an outcast person (âbhityáktá) to be bitten by a cobra, spies may collect revenue under the pretext of undertaking remedial measures against ominous phenomena.