Listen to my story which is a true narrative of what I saw myself. "Long before you waged your battle there, a brahmana, lived in Kurukshetra, who obtained his daily food by gleaning in the fields.

He and his wife, son and daughter-in-law, all four lived in this manner. Every day in the afternoon they would sit down and have their only meal for the day.

On days when they failed to find enough grain, they would fast until the next after noon. They would not keep over any thing for the next day if they got more than they required for the day. This was the strict unchhavritti discipline they had pledged themselves to observe.

"They passed their days thus for many years, when a great drought came and there was famine all over the land. All cultivation ceased and there was neither sowing nor harvesting nor any grain scattered in the fields to be gleaned.