Persons aspiring to be favoured by Sri, the goddess of prosperity, beauty and love, should perform their life’s duties with unshaken fortitude, joyfully setting their steps on the heavenward path. Their homes are to be immaculately clean and their servants and helpers heartily satisfied. They should be grateful to all for any good turn; be never uxorious; regularly worshipping the Deity in the holy fire; sweet and obliging in address; taking up only works fit and proper; gifted with the sense of shame; self-controlled by means of solemn vow; undergoing fasts and austerities: continuously cheerful; mindful of scriptural studies; waking up before sunrise and not lounging in bed at morning hours; sleeping only half the night and never during day; habitually happy in showing kindness to distressed, helpless, aged, weak and sick fellow-beings as well as to womankind in general; ever ready to console the alarmed, cheerless, the anxious, the terrified, the diseased , the deprived and the afflicted; averse to partake single savoury dishes; never knowing others’ women; regarding others with deep love as they would themselves; permanently disposed to charity; and skilful, upright, persevering, forgiving, perfectly friendly, shorn of all arrogance, and never indulging in debauchery.
The above paragraph is an extract from the great Indian epic Mahabharata.
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