The Story of My Experiments with Truth

The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

In bidding farewell to the reader, for the time being at any rate, I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon of Ahimsa in mind, word and deed.

Endnotes

1. Literally freedom from birth and death. The nearest English equivalent is “salvation.” ↩

2. Literally a period of four months. A vow of fasting and semi-fasting during the four months of the rains. The period is a sort of long Lent. ↩

3. A sort of fast in which the daily quantity of food is increased or diminished according as the moon waxes or wanes. ↩

4. Saptapadi are seven steps a Hindu bride and bridegroom walk together, making at the same time promises of mutual fidelity and devotion, after which the marriage becomes irrevocable. ↩

5. Kansar is a preparation of wheat which the pair partake of together after the completion of the ceremony. ↩

6. Ahimsa means literally not-hurting, nonviolence. ↩

7. Brahmacharya means literally conduct that leads one to God. Its technical meaning is self-restraint, particularly mastery over the sexual organ. ↩

8. Eleventh day of the bright and the dark half of a lunar month. ↩

9. Laws of Manu the Hindu lawgiver. They have the sanction of religion. ↩

10. One who observes brahmacharya, i.e. complete self-restraint. (See note 7.) ↩

11. “Nirbal ke bala Rama”⁠—Refrain of Surdas’ famous hymn, “He is the help of the helpless, the strength of the weak.” ↩

12. An Indian pulse. ↩

13. A knowing one, a seer. ↩

14. Throne ↩

15. The famous word in Hindu philosophy which is nearly untranslatable, but has been frequently translated in English as “delusion,” “illusion.” ↩

16. The prayer prescribed by the Koran. ↩

17. The Bhagavad Gita, 2‒59. ↩

18. Duties of the four fundamental divisions of Hindu Society. ↩

19. See third paragraph of Chapter 13. ↩

20. I.e. waiters. ↩

21. Regarding the use of the word “volatile,” see note “In Justice to Her Memory,” Young India, 30th June, 1927. ↩

22. Monks. ↩

23. A place in Porbandar State noted locally for its coarse woollen fabrics. ↩

24. Priests. ↩

25. Gift. ↩

26. Worship. ↩

27. A light Indian bedstead. ↩

Colophon

The Story of My Experiments with Truth
was published in 1927 and 1929 by
Mahatma Gandhi.
It was translated from Gujurati in 1927 and 1929 by
Mahadev Desai.

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