Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.14.4

jihma-prāyaḿ vyavahṛtaḿ

śāṭhya-miśraḿ ca sauhṛdam

pitṛ-mātṛ-suhṛd-bhrātṛ-

dam-patīnāḿ ca kalkanam

SYNONYMS

jihma-prāyam — cheating; vyavahṛtam — in all ordinary transactions; śāṭhya — duplicity; miśram — adulterated in; ca — and; sauhṛdam — regarding friendly well-wishers; pitṛ — father; mātṛ — regarding the mother; suhṛt — well-wishers; bhrātṛ — one's own brother; dam-patīnām — regarding husband and wife; ca — also; kalkanam — mutual quarrel.

TRANSLATION

All ordinary transactions and dealings became polluted with cheating, even between friends. And in familial affairs, there was always misunderstanding between fathers, mothers and sons, between well-wishers, and between brothers. Even between husband and wife there was always strain and quarrel.

PURPORT

A conditioned living being is endowed with four principles of malpractice, namely errors, insanity, inability and cheating. These are signs of imperfection, and out of the four the propensity to cheat others is most prominent. And this cheating practice is there in the conditioned souls because the conditioned souls are primarily in the material world imbued with an unnatural desire to lord it over the material world. A living being in his pure state is not conditioned by the laws because in his pure state he is conscious that a living being is eternally subservient to the Supreme Being, and thus it is always good for him to remain subservient, instead of falsely trying to lord it over the property of the Supreme Lord. In the conditioned state the living being is not satisfied even if he actually becomes the lord of all that he surveys, which he never becomes, and therefore he becomes the victim of all kinds of cheating, even with his nearest and most intimate relations. In such an unsatisfactory state of affairs, there is no harmony, even between father and sons or between husband and wife. But all these contending difficulties can be mitigated by one process, and that is the devotional service of the Lord. The world of hypocrisy can be checked only by counteraction through devotional service to the Lord and nothing else. Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira, having observed the disparities, conjectured the disappearance of the Lord from the earth.