Verse 10

⁵When those mendicants who taught me understanding had gone away, and I was still in my first years, this is what I then did. ⁶My mother had one child only. She was a woman, simple, and a servant, and upon me, her son, who had nowhere else to turn, she fastened the bond of her love. ⁷Not being her own mistress, she was not able to do it, though she wished my keeping and my safety; for the world stands in the Lord's control, like a doll of wood. ⁸And I, for her sake, stayed on in that house of brahmanas, a boy of five years who knew nothing of quarters, of places, or of times. ⁹One night, as she went out of the house along the path to milk a cow, a snake, touched by her foot and urged on by time, bit that poor woman.

¹⁰Then, taking that for a favour of the Lord, who wishes peace for those who are his, I set out for the northern quarter.