Verse 17

¹⁷I will tell you the rules of the forest dweller, the ones the sages agree on, standing by which a sage goes straight from here to the world of the sages. ¹⁸He should not eat what ripens on ploughed ground, nor even what grows unploughed if it is out of season. He may take food cooked on fire, or raw, or ripened by the sun. ¹⁹With what the forest gives he should offer the boiled oblations and the cakes the season calls for. When new grain comes to him, he throws the old away. ²⁰He should take shelter, a hut of leaves or a cave in the hills, only for the fire's sake, himself bearing the cold, the wind, the fire, the rain and the burning of the sun.

²¹He keeps the hair of his head and body, his nails, his beard and his dirt, and goes with matted hair, carrying water pot and deerskin, staff, bark clothes and the gear of the fire. ²²The sage should live in the forest twelve years, or eight, or four, or two, or one, so far as his mind will hold without being broken by the hardship. ²³When illness or old age makes him unable in his own practice, or unable in the searching kind of knowledge, he should take up fasting and what goes with it.