Hear now the tale of my wanderings and sufferings, as remembered from ages past. There was a time when, like a feeble old man digging at the roots of withered trees, I found my store of virtue exhausted, my merits drawn out one by one until nothing remained. In the forest wilderness, I survived on the meanest fare, hungrily eating cooked mud from small bowls, unwashed and handled by rough hands, as if I lived with a wicked wife. That which should have been my own share, my fortune, was taken and sold elsewhere by those with many mouths and distorted features, leaving me weakened and spent. I endured a fate where the flesh of my living body was cut away again and again, sold for a price in the lands of the Vindhya outcasts, as if my very lifespan was being bartered away. My accumulated sins, gathered over thousands of births, were scattered and mingled in pleasure gardens and parks, spreading ever further. Even the spade I used, I gazed upon with a strange affection; fallen as I was, like one cast into the torments of Raurava hell, I became as tender-hearted as a crow. Roaming through the thickets and brambles of the Vindhya forest, I covered myself with rows of leaves, forming a kinship with the wild tribes that dwelled there. My wife and children subsisted on coarse food, begged from villagers or taken by force when I subdued the strong with my staff. Nights I spent shivering on dry palm leaves, the darkness echoing with the cries of wild beasts. I huddled with forest monkeys, my teeth chattering in the cold. In the chill of the rainy season, my body bristled with hair, and drops of water clung to me like strings of pearls. Hunger drove my wife and me to quarrel bitterly in the depths of the great forest, fighting over a mere piece of ginger or ajwain root, her belly shrunken by want. My appearance became frightful: teeth chattering, eyes wide from cold, limbs blackened with soot—I seemed a goblin even to my own kin. I wandered the riverbanks with a fishing hook, seeking fish as Death himself roams the worlds with his noose, hunting living beings. After long fasts, I drank the freshly drawn, warm blood of slain animals, as an infant drinks its mother’s milk. I saw others, intoxicated and blood-stained, clad in palāś leaves, dwelling in cremation grounds—fleeing like ghouls from the wrath of a fierce goddess. In the forest, I spread nets to catch beasts and birds, just as hope is extended through children, wives, and kin, longing for growth. Yet, by my own hands, worlds woven of illusion, birds made of threads, and nets were brought to ruin, as were the fortunes of the virtuous. There, my mind, rushing toward evil deeds, stretched hope far—like a river swollen in the rainy season. Compassion, like a snake’s cast-off skin, was shed and abandoned in shame. Instead, I adopted cruelty, loud anger, and showers of arrows, dark as storm clouds at summer’s end. Those who thrived and remained whole, people shunned, as they would avoid bad luck long carried by me and hidden in a chasm. In corners crowded with dogs and crows, in fields of suffering, I sowed seeds of evil deeds, watered by the rains of delusion. Like a merciless hunter in a mountain cave, casting his net, I moved among the animals as Death moves among the living. My weary head rested against the mud walls of peasants’ huts, sleeping in ignorance, as the serpent rests on the limbs of the sleeping god Vishnu. Clad in fluttering leaves, my body smoky with the gleam of arrows, I dwelt in cold caves along the Vindhya’s slopes. For a long time, I wore a tattered black garment, thick with filth, on my shoulder, as the earth bears the wild boar’s weight in the heat of summer. Many times, I became like the fire at the end of an age, burning up the creatures of the forest, imitating Time itself as it consumes the world. There, my wives and children were born to me—hard to manage, like iron fetters or misfortunes, bringing only suffering. With only one child, a little boy, I spent sixty brief years in that place, afflicted by incurable faults. Bound by chains of bad habits, I endured much: being shouted at, harsh words, weeping in misfortune, eating poor food, and sleeping in ruined huts. Then, as time passed, my life was worn thin by old age. My hair turned white as frost, my body frail as grass heavy with dew. The winds of karma tossed my actions about, in clear and turbid waters alike, as days slipped away like clusters of dried leaves. Just as arrows gather on a battlefield, so did pleasures and pains come ceaselessly—conflicts and duties, arriving and departing without end. My mind, caught in the whirlpool of the world’s illusions, spun like the swirling ocean waves. The restless wheel of thoughts, built from worries, turned within me, tossed about like a blade of grass in the ocean’s current. Weak and diminished, I was like an insect in a wound on the Vindhya mountain, or a donkey with only two legs, or one whose only refuge is a single village. My kingship forgotten, I was as helpless as a corpse in a great fever, settled in the state of an outcaste—like a bird with broken wings on a mountain. I was like the world at the end of an age, a forest consumed by wildfire, a dry tree struck by lightning, or a wave crashing on the shore. The Vindhya region became a desolate expanse, surrounded by a fierce, unbroken ring of death, without food, grass, leaves, or water. No rain fell from the clouds, which vanished and did not return. The wind carried only ashes, mixed with glowing embers. Thus, in the shadow of my karma, I endured the full measure of suffering, until all was spent and nothing remained but the silent, burning wind.