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120 home-stead. The way in which the poet first fell in love, as related by the people of the locality, is curious. By one of those echoes from the future which are heard by the human mind, on that very day in his life when the stars were set for his meeting with Rāmī, he had a foregleam of his coming experiences in love. He had gone to purchase fish in the market. There he offered a certain price to a fish-wife for the fish he wished to buy, but at that very moment she gave a greater quantity for the same price to another; Chandī Dās was struck by this inequality of treatment and asked the fisherwoman's reason. She smiled and said "Oh, but his case is altogether different. We love each other!" Chandī Dās stood silent for sometime, brooding over this reply. The sweetness of such a feeling attracted him, and it so happened that on that very day, Rāmī, the young washerwoman, in all the beauty of her maiden-hood came into his sight and he fell over head and ears in love with her.

The result was disastrous from a worldly point of view. He was a Brahmin and the washerwoman could take only the dust of his feet. Any other relation between them was not to be tolerated by society. Chandī Dās has told us in his songs that his love for Rāmī was pure, there being in it no element of passion. In his devotion to his lady, however, he would not now brook any restraint. He openly avowed his love in songs, and remained absorbed in a sort of reverie, neglecting the duties of his priestly calling. The love of Tasso for Leonara or even of Dante for Beatrice can scarcely lay claim to comparison with the martyrdom endured