The Suta said: "After a long time had passed, that sage, firm in his vow, wise, devoted to austerity, did not desire a wife. Celibate, absorbed in austerity and in the study [of the Vedas], free from fear and weariness, he, great of soul, wandered over the whole earth and did not desire a wife even in thought. Then, in another age, [there lived] a king renowned by the name Parikshit, guardian of the Kuru line — just as [once] his great-grandfather, the mighty-armed Pandu, best of archers, had [before him] been devoted to the hunt. Shooting deer, boars, hyenas, buffaloes, and other forest [game], the lord of the earth roamed about. Once, having wounded a deer with a feathered arrow and taking his bow upon his back, he rushed into the dense forest — just as the lord Rudra, having pierced the sacrificial deer in heaven, pursued it bow in hand, searching everywhere. [For] a deer wounded by him never went away alive into the forest; and that [the deer got away] was surely a first sign, portending King Parikshit's [own approaching] ascent to heaven, since the wounded deer had vanished. Carried far away by that deer, the lord of the earth, exhausted, tormented by thirst, came upon a sage in the forest. [That sage, Shamika,] sat in a pasture of cows, feeding [only] on the abundant foam [dripping] from the mouths of calves drinking milk. Rushing swiftly up to him, firm in his vow, the king, afflicted by hunger and weariness, raising his bow, asked that sage: "Ho, brahmin! I am King Parikshit, son of Abhimanyu; a deer wounded by me has vanished — have you by chance seen it?" But that sage, abiding in a vow of silence (mauna-vrata), answered him nothing. And the enraged king hung a dead snake upon his shoulder, lifting it on the tip of his bow, and looked at him; but he said nothing to him — neither good nor ill. And the king, his anger spent, grieved, seeing him [remain] in such [composure], went away to the city; the sage, however, remained sitting just as he had been."