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died in February. We had met him a few weeks earlier in the Swetamber Temple in Kolhapur. The young Munis who were with him explained to us the "Gunratnasamvatsar" austerity he had vowed to undergo. A fast lasting 480 days which, we were told, had not been done for over 150 years. During the first 261 days of this austerity one is allowed to take food on 57 days only, while during the remaining 219 days the intake of food is confined to mere 16 days. When we met him, Muni Somtilak Vijay had been fasting for eleven months, yet he was, in spite of his 77 years of age and weighing only 35 kilograms, alert and healthy. Now we learned that he had died; it saddened us, but though he had not been able to complete his vow, his steadfast example will not have been in vain.
The last few days of our journey we spent as guests of the Teen Moorti Mandir in Borivali Natural Park near Bombay. Having begun our three-months pilgrimage with a visit to the Bahubali statue in the precincts of Bahubali Vidyapeeth, and having revisited the matchless
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