Verse 7

⁷The royal sage Bharata saw the poor fawn carried along on the current and cast away, and out of pity, as a kinsman would, took it up; and since its mother was dead he brought it to his hermitage. ⁸Now once he had come to call that fawn his own, day after day, with the feeding and guarding and petting and pleasing of it and the thinking about it, his private observances, and the restraints along with them, and the service of the Person and the rest, fell away one by one over a few days, and every one of them was gone. ⁹How sad, he thought. This poor fawn, by the whirling speed of the Lord's chariot wheel cut off from its own herd and friends and kin, has come to me for shelter. It has come to me alone for mother and father, for brothers and kinsmen and herd, and knows no one else. It trusts me utterly. So it is for me, who know the fault of failing one who has taken refuge, to feed and guard and please and pet this creature that has made me its whole reliance, and to grudge it nothing.

¹⁰Surely the noble and the good, whose nature is quiet, who are friends to the helpless, will let even weighty concerns of their own go for a matter such as this. ¹¹So he grew bound to it, and in sitting, lying down, walking, bathing, eating and the rest he was there with the fawn, his heart tied to it by affection. ¹²When he went into the forest to fetch kusa grass, flowers, kindling, leaves, fruit, roots and water, he took the fawn with him, expecting danger from wolves and wild dogs and the like. ¹³On the way, when in its innocence it hung back at this thing and that, he would carry it on his shoulder out of tenderness, his heart weighed down with love; and setting it in his lap and against his breast and fondling it, he found the greatest delight.