I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day only that I have been covered with rags.  A rich and very charitable Brahman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire me—­the finest that had ever been seen in our village.  I showed them to the other Brahmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so fortunate an acquisition.  They told me it must be the fruit of some good deeds that I had done in a preceding generation.  Before I should put them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them from the soil of the weaver’s touch, and hung them up to dry, with the ends fastened to two branches of a tree.  A dog, then happening to come that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high enough to touch the clothes or not.  I asked my children, who were present, but they said they were not quite certain.  How, then, was I to discover the fact?  I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.  “Did I touch it?” said I to the children, who were observing me.  They answered, “No,” and I was filled with joy at the news.  But after reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have reached my cloth.  To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth, turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a second time under the clothing.  The children immediately cried out that the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth.  This proved to me that the point of the dog’s tail must have done so too, and that my garments were therefore polluted.  In my rage I pulled down the beautiful raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the dog and his master.

When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the world, and I was universally treated as a madman.  “Even if the dog had touched the cloth,” said they, “and so brought defilement upon it, might not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain?  Or might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in pieces?  After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another time?” This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece of cloth to pull to pieces.

He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he seemed to understand going on all-fours.  “Exceedingly well,” said he, “as you shall see;” and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the unbounded laughter of the spectators.  “Enough! enough!” said the president.  “What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his favour.  But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in proof of his stupidity.”  The second accordingly began by expressing his confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would change their opinion.