officers at once sent messengers to Nañjaṅgôḍ informing the officers of the Amildârî that a newly appointed Amildâr would be coming soon. So they all waited near the gate of the town to pay their respects to the new Amildârî and escort him into it.
Gunḍappa started the very next morning to Nañjaṅgôḍ with a bundle containing clean clothes, six by twelve cubits long, on his head. Poor priest! Wherever he saw the kuśa grass on the road, he was drawn to it by its freshness, and kept on storing it up all the way. The sacred grass had become so dear to him, that, though he would have no occasion to use it as Amildâr of Nañjaṅgôḍ, he could not pass by it without gathering some of it. So with his bundle of clothes on his head and his beloved kuśa grass in his hands, Gunḍappa approached the city of Nañjaṅgôḍ about the twentieth ghaṭikâ of the day.
Now, though it was very late in the day, none of the officers, who had come out to receive the Amildâr had returned home to their meals. Everyone was waiting in the gate and when Gunḍappa turned up, no one took him to be anything more than a priest. The bundle on his head and the green ritual grass in his hands proclaimed his vocation. But everyone thought that, as a priest was coming by the very road the Amildâr would take, he might bring news of him—whether he had halted on the road and
