Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/50

32 Dere, on his own ancestral property. The Zemindar of the village wanted him to appear as a witness on his side, threatening him with confiscation of his property and ex- pulsion from his village, if he refused. Khudiram refused, left his village, and migrated to Kmrpur, a village two or three miles east of Dere. There, through the help of some true friends, he managed to make a poor living, and yet he was always profusely generous to the poor and hospitable to everybody, living chiefly in the company of religious men, performing every kind of worship, and trying to realise religion to its fullest extent

There is a story that Rmakftsh#a's father was going to pay a visit to his daughter one day, some twelve or fourteen miles from the place where he lived. After travelling more than half the way, he came across a Bel- tree, beautifully covered with new-grown green leaves. These leaves are very sacred to a Hindu, and they use them in worshipping the god .Siva. It was spring-time. The Bel-trees were casting off their old leaves, and the man had not recently been able to find any good leaves to offer to *Sva. On finding these, he at once climbed up the tree, gathered as many leaves as he could carry, and returned home to worship *Siva, without going to see his daughter. He was a great lover of Rfima, and his tutelary deity was the pure and divine SA Rma>&andra. He had a little plot of land outside the village, and in the sowing time, after getting a man to plough the field, he would go himself; put a few grains of rice in the name of Raghuvlra on the ground first, and then order the labourers to finish