XIX.
THE CONQUEST OF FATE.
In the Dakshinadêśa there lived a Brâhmiṇ boy who from his childhood was given a very liberal education in Saṅskṛit. He had read so much in philosophy that before he reached the sixteenth year of his life he began to despise the pleasures of the world. Everything which he saw was an illusion (mithyâ) to him. So he resolved to renounce the world and to go to a forest, there to meet with some great sage, and pass his days with him in peace and happiness.
Having thus made up his mind, he left his home one day without the knowledge of his parents and travelled towards the Danḍakâranya. After wandering for a long time in that impenetrable forest, and undergoing all the miseries of a wood inhabited only by wild beasts, he reached the banks of the Tuṅgabhadrâ. His sufferings in his wanderings in a forest untrodden by human feet, his loneliness in the midst of wild beasts, his fears whether after all he had not failed in his search for consolation in
