48. I raved sometimes in my rage, and wept at others in my bitter grief; I fared on coarse meals, and dwelt, alas! in the abodes of vulgar Chandálas. Thus I passed so many years of my misery at that place, as one fastened to the fetters of his insatiable desires, is doomed to toil and moil for naught until his death. (Bound to our desires, we are dragged to the grave). CHAPTER CVIII. DESCRIPTION OF A DROUGHT AND DEARTH. Argument. The distress of Chandálas caused by famine and want of Rain. The king continued to say:—Time passed away, and old age overtook me, and turned my beard to blades of grass covered with hoar frost. 2. My days glided away in alternate joy and grief, brought on by my fate and acts; just as a river flows on with the green and dried leaves, which the winds scatter over it. 3. Quarrels and broils, misfortunes and mischances, befell on me every moment; and beset me as thickly and as fastly as the arrows of woe flying in a warfare. 4. My foolish mind kept fluttering like a bird, in the maze of my wishes and fancies; and my heart was perturbed by passions, like the sea by its raging waves. 5. My soul was revolving on the vehicle of my wandering thoughts; and I was borne away by them like a floating straw, to the whirlpool of the eventful ocean of time. 6. I that moved about like a worm amidst the woodlands of Vindhyá, for my simple supportance, felt myself in the process of years, to be weakened and pulled down in my frame, like a biped beast of burthen. 7. I forgot my royalty like a dead man, in that state of my wretchedness, and was confirmed in my belief of a Chandála, and bound to that hilly spot like a wingless bird. 8. The world appeared to me, as desolate as at its final desolation; and as a forest consumed by a conflagration; it seemed as the sea-shore lashed by huge surges; and as a withered tree struck by a lightning. 9. The marshy ground at the foot of Vindhyá was all dried up, and left no corn nor vegetable, nor any water for food or drink; and the whole group of Chandálas, was about to die in dearth and dryness. 10. The clouds ceased to rain, and disappeared from sight; and the winds blew with sparks of fire in them. (The hot winds of the monsoon called agni-vrishti). 11. The forest trees were bare and leafless, and the withered leaves were strewn over the ground; wild fires were raging here and there, and the wood-lands became as desolate, as the abodes of austere ascetics (dwelling in the deserts). 12. There ensued a formidable famine, and a furious flame of wildfire spread all around; it burnt down the whole forest, and reduced the grass and gravels all to ashes. 13. The people were daubed with ashes all over their bodies, and were famishing for want of food and drink; because the land was without any article of food or even grass or water in it, and had turned to a dreary desert.