“The Chandala said, ’Formerly, O king, certain kine belonging to Brahmana were stolen.  While they were being carried away, some milk from their udders fell upon a number of Soma plants that grew by the roadside.  Those Brahmanas that drank the juice of the plants thus bedewed with milk, as also the king who performed the sacrifice in which that Soma was drunk, had to sink in hell.  Indeed, for having thus appropriated some thing that had belonged to a Brahmana, the king with all the Brahmanas that had assisted him had to go to hell.  All those men also, Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, that drank milk or ghee or curds, in the palace of the king who had stolen the Brahmana’s kine, had to fall into hell.  The stolen kine also, shaking their bodies, slew with their milk the sons and grandsons of those that had stolen them, as also the king and the queen although the latter treated the animals with great care and attention.  As regards myself, O king, I used to live in the observance of the vow of Brahmacharya in that place where these kine were placed after they had been stolen away.  The food I had obtained by begging became sprinkled over with the milk of those kine.  Having taken that food, O thou of the royal order, I have, in this life, become a Chandala.  The king who had stolen the kine belonging to a Brahmana obtained an infamous end.  Hence, one should never steal or appropriate anything that belongs to a Brahmana.  Behold to what state I am reduced in consequence of my having eaten food that had been sprinkled over with milk belonging to a Brahmana!  It is for this reason that Soma plants become unsaleable by a person possessed of wisdom.  They who sell the Soma plant are censured by the wise.  Indeed, O son, they who purchase Soma and they who sell it, both sink in the hell called Raurava when, departing from this world, they repair to the region of Yama.  That man who, possessing a knowledge of the Vedas, duly sells Soma, becomes in his next life a usurer and quickly meets with destruction.  For three hundred times he has to sink into hell and become transformed into an animal that subsists upon human ordure.  Serving a person that is vile and low, pride, and rape upon a friend’s wife, if weighed against one another in a balance, would show that pride, which transcends all restraints, is the heaviest.  Behold this dog, so sinful and disagreeably pale and lean! (He was a human being in his former life).  It is through pride that living creatures attain to such a miserable end.  As regards myself, I was born in a large family, in a former birth of mine.  O lord, and I was a thorough master of all branches of knowledge and all the sciences.  I knew the gravity of all these faults, but influenced by pride, I became blinded and ate the meat attached to the vertebral columns of animals.  In consequence of such conduct and such food, I have come to this state.  Behold the reverses brought about by Time!  Like a person whose cloth has taken fire at one end, or