ABSTRACT
However, covered with dirt and filth, in agony because of ripping out my hair, suffering greatly because of hunger and thirst and intensely distressed because of all the intense restraints imposed on me with regard to my standing, sitting, lying down and eating, as if I were an elephant in the course of being trained for the first time, I reflected: ‘I am a member of the brahman caste. This descent into a heretical path cannot be my religion, for my forebears proceeded in a mode of life which was in accordance with the primordial Hindu scriptures. But now, wretch that I am, I have to assume the contemptible dress of nudity which is to all intents and purposes a fraud and will, through being obliged to listen to continual insults of the Hindu gods, end up in hell after I die, a rebirth which will not have any favourable result for me. I have to follow a totally irreligious path as if it were the true religion’. After thinking over this unhappy choice that I have made, I have come to this grove of trees and am now weeping my heart out.
