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We must add a portrait from his own book to understand the human strain in the Maharshi's religion:

And at her death the Ganges is still the background of the mournful last ceremony. The pious old woman was carried down as her death drew near, according to custom, but unwillingly and protestingly, to the shed by the Ganges. She lived three nights.

The sound of a chant came to him, and a sudden sense of the unreality of earthly things stole upon him. The thought of wealth and