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The priests knew what had happened, and the people guessed; but India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyasi, or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary.
"I am conscious of my dependence on God." "Words are cheap! Life has shielded you thus far! What a plight if you were forced to look to the Invisible Hand for your food and shelter! You would soon be begging on the streets!" "Never! I would not put faith in passers-by rather than God! He can devise for His devotee a thousand resources besides the begging-bowl!" "More rhetoric!
The Queen could not tell. But despairing, she rose and went to the silent monk, leading the Prince by the hand. Swiftly he stripped the child of the silk pasoh of royalty, swiftly he cut the long black tresses knotted on the little head, and upon the slender golden body he set the yellow robe worn by the Lord Himself on earth, and in the small hand he placed the begging-bowl of the Lord.
In one hand she held a begging-bowl while with the other she guided the feeble steps of the aged lama whose disciple she was supposed to be. Behind them limped a lame lay-brother of their monastery. In this disguise the fugitives met with no hindrance as they quitted the town for the open country, heading towards the south.
An exclamation interrupted him. It came from one of the relief party who had clambered into the cavern and was spading there in the loose soil. "What is it?" "A skeleton, sir! stretched here as natural as life." The General dismounted and clambered to the entrance, followed by his staff officer. As they reached it, the man stooped again and rose with something in his hand. "Eh? A begging-bowl?"
The girl at his side gave another light laugh. "You can find out all you want in so simple a fashion," she murmured. "Turn your head to the right, and near a patch of acacia bushes you will see a monk with his begging-bowl. Cross over to him, and drop a piece of money into the bowl. At the same moment you can take out of it the letter which your father has sent to you by his hands.
'And for food? Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere about them, but the Curator wished to make sure. 'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. I have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit. He nodded his head valiantly.
Now he would let those things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs. Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown coco-de-mer in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground behind him they were firing salutes from the bastions in honour of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded.
So thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about his shoulders, the stone slab at the side of the antelope skin was dented into a little hole by the foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the place between the tree-trunks, where the begging-bowl rested day after day, sunk and wore into a hollow almost as smooth as the brown shell itself; and each beast knew his exact place at the fire.
When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts, indeed! Ho! ho! It is almonds in the Plains! He went out to levy on the village not with a begging-bowl, which might do for down-country, but in the manner of a prince. Shamlegh's summer population is only three families four women and eight or nine men.
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