Verse 1

¹One day Vainya, master of himself, lord of creatures, saw that he had grown old, having himself made every kind of his own offspring increase. ²He had given a living to the moving and the standing, upheld the dharma of the good, and carried out the Lord's command, the thing for which he had been born here. ³He gave his daughter into the keeping of his sons, though she seemed to weep at the parting, and left his people downcast; alone with his wife he went to the forest of austerity. ⁴There too his rule was not to be broken. He took up the fierce austerity that the forest-dwellers approve, as he had once taken up his own conquering.

⁵He ate bulbs and roots and fruit, and sometimes dry leaves; for some fortnights he took only water, and after that he lived on air. ⁶In the hot season the hero stood among five fires; in the rains the sage stood under the downpour; in the cold he was sunk in water to his neck, and he slept on the bare ground.