15. Being thus in dread of every body in the neighbourhood, I removed myself to the house of another man, where I dwelt with my wife and prattling children for some years.
16. Then vexed by the scolding of the termagant Chandálí, and the threats of the villainous Chandálas; my face became as pale as the waning moon under the shadow of Ráhu (the ascending node).
17. I was bit and scratched by the teeth and nails of my wife, as if my flesh and muscles were torn and gnawed down under the grinders of a tigress; and I was as one caught by or sold to a hellish fiend, and thought myself as changed to an infernal being also.
18. I suffered under the torrents of snow thrown out of the caverns of the Himálaya, and was exposed to the showers of frost, that fell continually in the dewy season.
19. I felt on my naked body the iron shafts of rain, as darts let fly from the bow of death; and in my sickly and decrepit old age, I had to live upon the roots of withered vegetables.
20. I dug them out plentifully from the woodland grounds and eat them with a zest, as a fortunate man has in tasting his dainty dishes of well cooked meat.
21. I took my food apart and untouched by any body, for fear of being polluted by the touch of a vile and base born family; and because the pungency of my unsavoury diet, made my mouth wry at every morsel.
22. While I was famishing in this manner, I saw others had their venison and sheep’s flesh bought from other places for their food; and who pampered their bodies also with the flesh they cut out from other living animals and devoured raw with great zest.
23. They bought animal flesh sold in iron pots and stuck in spits, for undergoing migrations into as many thousand bodies as they have killed and fed upon. (This is the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis of the soul, as described in Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World).
24. I often repaired to the garden grounds of the Chandálas, with my spade and basket in the cool of the evening, in order to collect the raw flesh, which had been cast about in the dirt, for making any food of them.