put on the garb
of a _jogi_ and in spite of their protests went out into the world.

After journeying two or three days he came to a town in which a
pestilence was raging and he sat down to rest under a tree on the
outskirts. There he noticed that many corpses had been thrown out and
he saw two vultures fly down to feed on the bodies; and the he-vulture
said to his mate "Which corpse shall we eat first?" Now the Brahman
somehow understood the language of the birds--but the mate returned
no answer though the he-vulture kept on repeating the question; at
last she said "Don't you see there is a man sitting at the foot of
the tree?" Then they both approached the Brahman and asked why he was
sitting in such a place and whether he was in distress; he told them
that trouble had driven him from his home and that he was wandering
about the world as chance led him, because the continual quarrelling of
his two wives was more than he could bear. The vultures said "We will
give you a means by which you may see your wives as they really are"
and one of them pulled out a wing feather and told him when he went
to any house begging to stick it behind his ear and then he would
see what the people were really like; and they advised him to marry a
woman who gave him alms with her hands. Then he got up and went away
with the feather, leaving the birds to prey on the corpses.

When the Brahman came to a village to beg he saw by the aid of the
feather, that some of the people were really cats and some were dogs
and other animals and when they gave him alms they brought it in their
teeth; then he made up his mind to go home and see what his wives
really were; and he found that one was a bitch and one was a sow;
and when they brought him water they carried the cup in their months;
at this sight he left the house again in disgust, determined to marry
any woman who offered him alms with her hands.

He wandered for days till at last the daughter of a Chamar, when he
begged, brought him alms in her hands; and he at once determined to
stay there and marry her at all costs; so he sat down and when the
Chamar asked why he did not go away he said that he meant to marry the
girl who had given him alms and live in his house as his son-in-law;
the Chamar did all he could to remonstrate at such an extraordinary
proposal as that a Brahman should destroy his caste by marrying a
Chamar; the Brahman said that they might do what they liked to him
but that h