Note 16 — Chapter CXIV

One day, as they were roaming about in their condition as Chaṇḍálas, bow in hand, tormented with hunger, they reached, in their search for food, a village of bandits. The warders of the village, supposing them to be thieves, arrested them both, as soon as they saw them, and cut off their ears and noses. And they bound them, and beat them with sticks, and brought them in this condition before the chiefs of the bandits. There they were questioned by the chiefs, and being bewildered with fear, and tormented with hunger and pain,16 they related their history to them. Then the chiefs of the gang, moved by pity, set them at liberty, and said to them, “Remain here and take food; do not be terrified. You have arrived here on the eighth day of the month, the day on which we worship Kártikeya, and so you are our guests; and should have a share in our feast.”17 “When the bandits had said this, they worshipped the goddess Durgá, and made the two Chaṇḍálas eat in their presence,18 and having, as it happened, taken a fancy to them, they would not let them out of their sight. Then they lived with those bandits by robbing, and thanks to their courage, became eventually the chiefs of the gang.