Do not take to gambling, even if you can win,
for your wins will be like the baited hooks that fish swallow.
To win once, a gambler loses a hundred times.
What a way to procure happiness and prosperity!
Incessantly calling bets on rolling dice causes
a man’s rich reserves and potential revenues to run elsewhere.
Gambling brings on many miseries and erodes one’s good name.
Nothing else ends in such wretched poverty.
Desiring to win everything, those who love the dice,
the gambling hall and their lucky hand lose it all.
Gambling is Misfortune’s other name. Fools ensnared by her
will suffer an empty stomach and distressing sorrows.
Spending time in the gambling hall squanders
ancestral wealth and wastes personal worth.
Gambling will consume a man’s wealth and corrupt his honesty.
It will curtail his benevolence and increase his torment.
Those who take to gambling’s fickle gain forfeit these five:
raiments, riches, rations, renown and erudition.
The gambler’s passion increases with the losses incurred.
Even so does the soul’s craving for life grow with the grief suffered.
~ Tirukkural, 94: 931-940
