[313] Then indeed, sirs, the bird Kuṇāla, having discerned the beginning, the middle, and the end of the verses of the deva-brahmin Nārada, spoke at that time these verses:
A wise man may converse with one holding a sharpened sword in hand;
he may converse even with a demon (pisāca) full of malice;
he may even draw near to a serpent of fierce venom;
but alone with a woman, one to one, let him never talk.
For women are ravagers of the mind of the world;
armed with dance, with song, with speech and smiles,
they beset the man whose mindfulness (sati) is unestablished,
as troops of she-demons on their island beset the merchants.
For them there is no discipline, no restraint (saṃvara);
given over to strong drink and flesh, unbridled,
they swallow down whatever a man has won,
as the timiṅgala swallows a sea-monster (makara) in the ocean.
Ranging amid the sweets of the five strands of sensual pleasure (kāmaguṇa),
haughty, inconstant, unrestrained,
women stream in upon the heedless man,
as rivers stream into the sea of salted waters.
Whatever man women cajole,
whether from desire, from passion, or for wealth,
though he be the very likeness of fire (jātaveda),
him they burn up — slayers by lust and by hate.
Knowing a man to be opulent, of great wealth,
they stream in upon him, with wealth and with their very selves;
him whose mind is enamoured they wind about and bind fast,
as the māluvā creeper binds the sāla tree in the forest.
They draw near with desire of many kinds,
adorned, their faces like painted images;
women smile coyly and laugh aloud,
adepts in a hundred wiles, like Saṃvara [the asura].
Decked with gold, with gems and pearls,
honoured in the families of their husbands,
women, though guarded, betray their lord,
as she who was lodged within his very breast betrayed the dānava.
For even a man of splendour, of discerning eye,
honoured and revered by many folk,
gone under the sway of women shines no more,
like the moon caught in the grip of Rāhu.
Whatever an angered foe might do to a foe,
or one of corrupted mind to an enemy encountered,
worse ruin even than that does he incur
who, full of longing, has gone under the sway of women.
Though menaced with hair torn out and with rending nails,
though beaten with foot and hand, with whip and rod,
women resort indeed to the base man:
in him they delight, as flies delight in a corpse.
In families or in the open streets,
in royal capitals or in market towns,
they are the snare and net of Namuci laid out:
let the man with eyes, who seeks his happiness, shun them.
Whoever, casting away the wholesome quality of austerity,
conducts himself in ignoble ways,
will barter away the estate of the gods for hell,
like a merchant [bartering his wares] for a gem that is bound to break.
Censured both here and in the world beyond,
the witless one, struck down by his own deed (kamma),
goes veering and lurching without direction,
like a chariot yoked to a vicious donkey, off upon the wrong road.
He goes to Patāpana, the hell of scorching heat,
and to the iron silk-cotton wood with thorns like spear-blades;
then, having sojourned in the animal womb (tiracchānayoni),
he is not released from the realm of the king of the petas.
The divine plays and delights in the Nandana Grove,
and the estate of a wheel-turning monarch (cakkavatti) among men —
these do women destroy for the heedless man,
and they deliver him over to a bad destination (duggati).
The divine plays and delights are not hard to win,
nor the estate of a wheel-turning monarch among men,
nor nymphs (accharā) whose dwellings are mansions of gold,
for those who fare having no need of women.
The destination that transcends the element of sense-desire (kāmadhātu),
the arising in the element of form (rūpadhātu), is not hard to win —
that rebirth in the sphere of those devoid of passion —
for those who fare having no need of women.
The passing beyond all suffering (dukkha) — the blissful (siva),
the absolute, the unshaken, the unconditioned (asaṅkhata) —
is not hard to win for the quenched, the pure,
for those who fare having no need of women.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.