WADHWAN-SURAT-JHANS! HI
humble present and making a full meal of it shower your
grace upon your slave,'* prayed the bania.
ktls anything -wrong with you?—what do you mean, eat
cotton seed ?" uttered the sadhu in consternation,
"Why not ? maharaj, a sadhu over there, beneath the
banyan tree, told me that you were an ass. An ass has a
great partiality for cotton seed—"
"You fool," he roared in rage, ''don't you see that I am
not an ass ?"
"How should I know, maharaj—a poor man like me
caught in the meshes of maya! It is said: a mahatma alone
can recognise a mahatma," replied the devotee with a sly
twitch at the corner of his thin lips.
The sadhu was by this time thoroughly roused and,
rising to his feet, said in an imperious voice:
"Bhaktraj, take me to the place where the other
mahatma is. I should like to teach him how to speak of his
betters."
They went. It appears there was a terrible fight between
the two mahatmas; the bania devotee witnessing the fan
from a distance. The affair ended in the sadhus going with-
out food for the whole day!
Bander is situated on the banks of the river TaptL
Eamdas was having his daily "bath in the river accompanied
by Ramcharandas. In the matter of bath Rameharandas
exercised absolute control over him. Sometimes he would
go to the length of making Rarndas yield to his will by
threats, as a mother would do with a contumacious child.
"Swamiji," he would say in a stern voice, "you should
not take bath there, come this side.1'
He would then take Ramdas by the arm and
almost drag him into knee-deep water and rub and scrub
him as a syce would do a horse! There was no donbt that
Ramcharandas was doing this out of the great love he
bore for Ramdas. In a few days Ramdas found that he had
lost all independence of action at the riverside* One day,