Three years.... And all that time Madhava walked the earth as Madhava, though not by the banks of Jumuna. He walked in a forest back from Ganges, a forest standing from old time, a resort from old time of holy men. Madhava gathered firewood, dry branches from beneath the trees, dead and broken scrub. He carried the fuel to the hut of such a man. When that was done, he shouldered an earthern jar and went for water to a spring two bow-shots away. When the water was brought, he made cakes of millet flour and baked them upon a heated stone. When they were baked he ranged them upon a board; and when this was done he went out under the trees, looking for Narayana, the holy man. He found him seated, entranced, under a sandal-wood tree. Madhava, stepping backward, returned to the hut and seating himself by the fire which burned without doors, waited for the seer to retake the body and bring it to the hut for food. Madhava was the holy man’s one pupil, his chela.
Madhava looked through the grey and green and purple arches of the forest. He looked at one spot, and he said over thrice verses that he had been taught, and strove to still the waves of the mind that ran here and there in twenty different channels. Madhava always found it very hard to still the mind, though the holy man told him the method time and again.... This day, somehow, the waves sank of their own accord.
Madhava, sitting there in the forest back of Ganges, beside the jar of water and the millet cakes, with the blue wood smoke rising in a feather, very quietly and suddenly remembered how he had happened to enter the forest. He had not remembered it before.... He had come to the forest from long travelling to and fro in a land of towns and temples and villages and roads with people always upon them. There he was the servant of a horse-trader, and people thought him out of his head, and the children gathered around him in the villages, and he told them stories of the animals in the forest, and especially of one great tiger. The horse-trader treated him very cruelly. He suffered. In the night-time he wept for wretchedness. Then one day, going upon the road that touched this forest, his master the horse-trader began to beat him mercilessly. Madhava felt something terrible rise within him. He took an iron bar and killed the horse-trader, and then he ran into the forest—ran and ran and ran, until he caught his foot in the root of a tree and fell, striking his head.... Madhava, sitting by the sage’s hut and fire, drew a long breath. It was clear how he came into the forest.
The holy man lying under the sandal-wood tree came back to his body and brought it to the hut and the evening meal. The blue feather of smoke went up, the shadows stretched at immense length, the insect folk made their even song. The seer sat down and took from Madhava’s hands a cup of water and a millet cake.
“Master,” said Madhava, “I have remembered how I came into the forest.”
“It was written that that would come to pass.”
“I was with my master, a horse-trader, who treated me cruelly. One day he beat and cursed me. Something terrible rose within me and I took an iron bar and killed him. Then I ran into the forest and ran and ran until I caught my foot in a root and fell upon my head—”
“That was a year ago,” said Narayana. “I found you lying without sense. I carried you here and nursed you well. But you could not remember until now how you came into the forest.”
“That was how I came,” said Madhava.
“It is well that that veil has been taken away. Now will you learn with greater strength.”