O Muni! After you had gone to practise Tapasyâ, the dire famine raged; and my sons,
- exhausted of hunger, became very anxious for food.
- I became very anxious to see the sons hungry;
- I then went out to the forest in quest of wild rice; and I got some fruits. Thus I spent some months by collecting the rice growing wildly in the forest; then in times these also could not be got and I became again anxious. The Nibâra rice, too, is now not available and nothing is obtained also by begging; there are no fruits on the trees and no roots are found under the earth. The sons are crying in agony of hunger.
- What to do? And where to go? What am I to say now to the hungry boys? Oh God! Thus thinking on various ways, I at last came to this conclusion that I would sell one of my sons