Verse 4

¹Having heard in this way of the divine sage's birth and his deeds, brahmana, the revered Vyasa, son of Satyavati, asked him further: ²When those mendicants who taught you understanding had gone away, and you were still in your first years, what did you do after that? ³Son of the Self-born, by what manner of living did you pass your later years? And how, when the time came, did you cast off this body? ⁴Best of the gods, this memory of yours reaches back into the age before; time, which undoes everything, has not cut it off.