The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story
wood, where Hansávalí was performing austerities. There he saw her
at the foot of a red Asoka-tree, thin and pale, but yet charming,
like the last digit of the gleaming moon. And he said to the bard;
"Who is this silent and motionless, engaged in meditation? Can she
be a goddess, for her beauty is more than human?" When the bard
heard that, he looked and said, "You are fortunate, my sovereign, in
finding Hansávalí; for it is she herself that is standing there." When
Hansávalí heard that, she looked at them, and recognising that bard,
she cried out with renewed grief; "Alas! my father, I am ruined! alas
my husband, Kamalákara! alas Manorathasiddhi! alas, Destiny, source
of untoward events!" Thus lamenting, she fell on the ground in a
faint, and when Kamalákara heard and saw her, he too fell on the
earth overpowered with grief. Then they were both brought round by
Manorathasiddhi; and when they had recognised one another for certain,
they were much delighted, and, having crossed the ocean of separation,
they experienced indescribable joy, and they told one another in due
course all their adventures. Then Kamalákara returned with Hansávalí
and that bard to the city of Kosala. There he received in marriage her
hand that had the power of removing disease, after summoning her father
the famous Meghamálin. Then Kamalákara shone exceedingly bright, being
united with Hansávalí, both whose wings were pure. [200] And having
attained his object in life, he lived happily with her whose endurance
had borne fruit, ruling the earth, inseparable from Manorathasiddhi.
"So you see those who do not lose heart, even in calamity, obtain
all they desire, and on the same principle you should abstain from
suicide, for, if you live, you will be reunited to that lord." With
these words the old traveller closed his tale, and after dissuading
me from death, departed whither he would.
After Bhímaparákrama had told all this to Mrigánkadatta at night in
the house of Chandaketu, he went on to say:
Continuation of the adventures of Bhímaparákrama.
So, having received useful admonition, I left that forest and went
to the city of Ujjayiní, for which I knew you were making, to find
you. When I did not find you there, I entered the house of a certain
woman to lodge, as I was worn out, and gave her money for food. She
gave me a bed, and being tired I slept for some time, but then I
woke up, and out of curiosity I remained quiet, and watched her, and
while I was watching, the woman took a handful of barley, and sowed
it all about inside the house, her lip trembling all the time with
muttering spells. Those grains of barley immediately sprang up, and
produced ears, and ripened, and she cut them down, and parched them,
and ground them, and made them into barley-meal. And she sprinkled
the barley-meal with water, and put it in a brass pot, and, after
arranging her house as it was before, she went out quickly to bathe.
Then, as I saw that she was a witch, I took the liberty of rising up
quickly; and taking that meal out of the brass pot, I transferred it
to the meal-bin, and I took as much barley-meal out of the meal-bin,
and placed it in the brass vessel, taking care not to mix the two
kinds. Then I went back again to bed, and the woman came in, and roused
me up, and gave me that meal from the brass pot to eat, and she ate
some herself, taking what she ate from the meal-bin, and so she ate
the charmed meal, not knowing that I had exchanged the two kinds. The
moment she had eaten that barley-meal, she became a she-goat; then
I took her and sold her by way of revenge to a butcher. [201]
Then the butcher's wife came up to me and said angrily, "You have
deceived this friend of mine--you shall reap the fruit of this." When
I had been thus threatened by her, I went secretly out of the town,
and being weary I lay down under a banyan-tree, and went to sleep. And
while I was in that state, that wicked witch, the butcher's wife, came
and fastened a thread on my neck. Then the wicked woman departed, and
immediately I woke up, and when I began to examine myself, lo! I had
turned into a peacock, though I still retained my intelligence. [202]
Then I wandered about for some days much distressed, and one day
I was caught alive by a certain fowler. He brought me here and
gave me to this Chandaketu, the principal warder of the king of the
Bhillas, by way of a complimentary present. The warder, for his part,
immediately made me over to his wife, and she put me in this house as
a pet bird. And to-day, my prince, you have been guided here by fate,
and have loosened the thread round my neck, and so I have recovered
my human shape.
"So let us leave this place quickly, for this warder always murders
next morning [203] the companions of his midnight rambles, for fear
his secrets should be disclosed. And to-day he has brought you here,
after you have been a witness of his nightly adventures, so fasten,
my prince, on your neck this thread prepared by the witch, and turn
yourself into a peacock, and go out by this small window; then I
will stretch out my hand and loosen the thread from your neck, which
you must put up to me, and I will fasten it on my own neck and go
out quickly in the same way. Then you must loosen the thread round
my neck, and we shall both recover our former condition. But it is
impossible to go out by the door which is fastened from outside."
When the sagacious Bhímaparákrama had said this, Mrigánkadatta
agreed to his proposal and so escaped from the house with him; and
he returned to his lodging where his other two friends were; there
he and his friends all spent the night pleasantly in describing to
one another all their adventures.
And in the morning Máyávatu, the Bhilla king, the head of that town,
came to Mrigánkadatta, and after asking him whether he had spent the
night pleasantly, he said to amuse him, "Come, let us play dice." Then
Mrigánkadatta's friend Srutadhi, observing that the Bhilla had come
with his warder, said to him, "Why should you play dice? Have you
forgotten? To-day we are to see the dance of the warder's peacock,
which was talked about yesterday." When the Savara king heard that,
he remembered, and out of curiosity sent the warder to fetch the
peacock. And the warder remembered the wounds he had inflicted,
and thought to himself, "Why did I in my carelessness forget to put
to death that thief, who witnessed my secret nightly expedition,
though I placed him in the peacock's house? So I will go quickly,
and do both the businesses." And thereupon he went quickly home.
But when he reached his own palace and looked into the house
where the peacock was, he could not find either the thief or the
peacock. Then terrified and despondent he returned and said to his
sovereign; "My lord, that peacock has been taken away in the night
by a thief." Then Srutadhi said smiling, "The man who took away your
peacock is renowned as a clever thief." And when Máyávatu saw them
all smiling, and looking at one another, he asked with the utmost
eagerness what it all meant. Then Mrigánkadatta told the Savara king
all his adventures with the warder; how he met him in the night,
and how the warder entered the queen's apartment as a paramour, and
how he drew his knife in a quarrel; how he himself went to the house
of the warder, and how he set Bhímaparákrama free from his peacock
transformation, and how he escaped thence.
Then Máyávatu, after hearing that, and seeing that the maid in
the harem had a knife-wound in the hand, and that when that thread
was replaced for a moment on the neck of Bhímaparákrama, he again
became a peacock, put his warder to death at once as a violator of
his harem. But he spared the life of that unchaste queen, on the
intercession of Mrigánkadatta, and renouncing her society, banished
her to a distance from his court. And Mrigánkadatta, though eager
to win Sasánkavatí, remained some more days in the Pulinda's town,
treated with great consideration by him, looking for the arrival of
the rest of his friends and his re-union with them.
CHAPTER LXXII.
While Mrigánkadatta was thus residing in the palace of Máyávatu, the
king of the Bhillas, accompanied by Vimalabuddhi and his other friends,
one day the general of the Bhilla sovereign came to him in a state of
great excitement, and said to him in the presence of Mrigánkadatta;
"As by your Majesty's orders I was searching for a man to offer as a
victim to Durgá, I found one so valiant that he destroyed five hundred
of your best warriors, and I have brought him here disabled by many
wounds." When the Pulinda chief heard that, he said to the general,
"Bring him quickly in here, and shew him to me." Then he was brought
in, and all beheld him smeared with the blood that flowed from his
wounds, begrimed with the dust of battle, bound with cords, and
reeling, like a mad elephant tied up that is stained with the fluid
that flows from his temples mixed with the vermilion painting on his
cheek. Then Mrigánkadatta recognised him as his minister Gunákara, and
ran and threw his arms round his neck, weeping. Then the king of the
Bhillas, hearing from Mrigánkadatta's friends that it was Gunákara,
bowed before him, and comforted him as he was clinging to the feet
of his master, and brought him into his palace, and gave him a bath,
and bandaged his wounds, and supplied him attentively with wholesome
food and drink, such as was recommended by the physicians. Then
Mrigánkadatta, after his minister had been somewhat restored, said to
him; "Tell me, my friend, what adventures have you had?" Then Gunákara
said in the hearing of all, "Hear, prince, I will tell you my story."
The adventures of Gunákara after his separation from the prince.
At that time when I was separated from you by the curse of the Nága,
I was so bewildered that I was conscious of nothing, but went on
roaming through that far-extending wilderness. At last I recovered
consciousness and thought in my grief, "Alas! this is a terrible
dispensation of unruly destiny. How will Mrigánkadatta, who would
suffer even in a palace, exist in this desert of burning sand? And how
will his companions exist? Thus reflecting frequently in my mind, I
happened, as I was roaming about, to come upon the abode of Durgá. And
I entered her temple, in which were offered day and night many and
various living creatures, and which therefore resembled the palace of
the god of Death. After I had worshipped the goddess there, I saw the
corpse of a man who had offered himself, and who held in his hand a
sword that had pierced his throat. When I saw that, I also, on account
of my grief at being separated from you, determined to propitiate the
goddess by the sacrifice of myself. So I ran and seized his sword. But
at that moment some compassionate female ascetic, after forbidding
me from a distance by a prohibitive shake of the head, came up to me,
and dissuaded me from death, and after asking me my story said to me;
"Do not act so, the re-union even of the dead has been seen in this
world, much more of the living. Hear this story in illustration of it."
Story of king Vinítamati who became a holy man.
There is a celebrated city on the earth, of the name of Ahichchhatrá,
[204] in it there dwelt of old time a mighty king, of the name of
Udayatunga. And he had a noble warder named Kamalamati. This warder had
a matchless son named Vinítamati. The lotus, in spite of its threads,
and the bow, in spite of its string, could not be compared to that
youth who possessed a string of good qualities, for the first was
hollow and the second crooked. One day, as he was on a platform on
the top of a palace white with plaster, he saw the moon rising in the
beginning of the night, like a splendid ear-ornament on the darkness of