The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara, Vol. I v1.c24.63

v1.c24.63

“My way of living is as follows : I remain continually shut up in my little mud-house. Thereto, every day, after I have said Mass and commended myself to the Lord, I give free admittance to whoever likes to speak to or to discuss with me. The time left to me, which is very short, I spend in writing, in the language of the country, the refutation of some of the false doctrines upheld by various leaders of thought among these people. As I am thus obliged to keep continually to my house, or rather to my single little room; and as the food I eat is not very substantial, since neither meat nor fish nor eggs ever so much as pass my door, I am always sickly; and few are the days in which I do not feel some pain either in the stomach or in the head. My food consists of a small quantity of rice, of which there is abundance in this country, and some herbs or fruits. This manner of diet I must observe; because if these people did not see me following this penitential kind of life, they would not consider me fit to teach them the heavenly way. For so are their doctors wont to live, and some of them even follow a harder and austerer kind of life. There are those in fact who do not even touch rice. Now if Your Excellency reflects that here the use of bread is unknown, and that as to wine, I use it only for Mass, Your Excellency may gather how little a man has to feed upon if he abstains from rice. As for me, I do not venture so far; because what I already do, namely abstaining from flesh and fish and eggs, suffices in order that those people may condescend to consider me as a true teacher of religion. At this very moment I am suffering from such a strong fit of asthma that I can scarcely breathe; and so I finish my letter bit by bit as I can" ¹.