He had come to the place appointed for him -- the silence and the space . After this , time stopped , and he , sitting at the mouth of the shrine , could not tell whether he were alive or dead ; a man with control of his limbs , or a part of the hills , and the clouds , and the shifting rain and sunlight . He would repeat a Name softly to himself a hundred hundred times , till , at each repetition , he seemed to move more and more out of his body , sweeping up to the doors of some tremendous discovery ; but , just as the door was opening , his body would drag him back , and , with grief , he felt he was locked up again in the flesh and bones of Purun Bhagat . Every morning the filled begging-bowl was laid silently in the crutch of the roots outside the shrine . Sometimes the priest brought it ; sometimes a Ladakhi trader , lodging in the village , and anxious to get merit , trudged up the path ; but , more often , it was the woman who had cooked the meal overnight ; and she would murmur , hardly above her breath . `` Speak for me before the gods , Bhagat . Speak for such a one , the wife of so-and-so ! '' Now and then some bold child would be allowed the honour , and Purun Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as fast as his little legs could carry him , but the Bhagat never came down to the village . It was laid out like a map at his feet . He could see the evening gatherings , held on the circle of the threshing-floors , because that was the only level ground ; could see the wonderful unnamed green of the young rice , the indigo blues of the Indian corn , the dock-like patches of buckwheat , and , in its season , the red bloom of the amaranth , whose tiny seeds , being neither grain nor pulse , make a food that can be lawfully eaten by Hindus in time of fasts . When the year turned , the roofs of the huts were all little squares of purest gold , for it was on the roofs that they laid out their cobs of the corn to dry . Hiving and harvest , rice-sowing and husking , passed before his eyes , all embroidered down there on the many-sided plots of fields , and he thought of them all , and wondered what they all led to at the long last . Even in populated India a man can not a day sit still before the wild things run over him as though he were a rock ; and in that wilderness very soon the wild things , who knew Kali 's Shrine well , came back to look at the intruder . The langurs , the big gray-whiskered monkeys of the Himalayas , were , naturally , the first , for they are alive with curiosity ; and when they had upset the begging-bowl , and rolled it round the floor , and tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch , and made faces at the antelope skin , they decided that the human being who sat so still was harmless . At evening , they would leap down from the pines , and beg with their hands for things to eat , and then swing off in graceful curves . They liked the warmth of the fire , too , and huddled round it till Purun Bhagat had to push them aside to throw on more fuel ; and in the morning , as often as not , he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket . All day long , one or other of the tribe would sit by his side , staring out at the snows , crooning and looking unspeakably wise and sorrowful . After the monkeys came the barasingh , that big deer which is like our red deer , but stronger . He wished to rub off the velvet of his horns against the cold stones of Kali 's statue , and stamped his feet when he saw the man at the shrine . But Purun Bhagat never moved , and , little by little , the royal stag edged up and nuzzled his shoulder .
Purun XXXXX slid one cool hand along the hot antlers , and the touch soothed the fretted beast , who bowed his head , and Purun Bhagat very softly rubbed and ravelled off the velvet .
Bhagat India Ladakhi Name barasingh begging-bowl cobs fire first overnight