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Rh of Hari, and all my thoughts were of release from worldly ambition, and of devotion to him.

"I wandered from the snows of Dhaulagiri to the lingams of Ceylon, and then I met the ascetic from Kashmere, the worshiper of the Lord Shiva, and I became his pupil and did bodily penance.

"Gradually I subdued my body. I submitted to the supreme ordeal of fire. I walked barefoot through the white-hot charcoal, I uncovered my head to the burning fire-bath, and I felt not the pain of the body.

"Only my tortured soul writhed with the anguish of my Fate. For I was alone and an outcast.

"I sat in the midday heat during the month of pilgrimages, with seven fires around me and the sun scorching my shaven head, and I turned my eyes toward myself and meditated on the mysterious way which is Life.

"Then I met the holy man from Guzerat who told me that to clear my vision and fatten the glebe of my understanding, I must do penance with the head hanging downward. I remember well when I started this penance.

"It was in the Grishna season, and behind the western mountains the sun was setting, shrouded