The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story
praised him in the following words; "Hail thou elephant-faced lord,
who art, as it were, worshipped by the earth, that with its plains,
rocks, and woods, bows under the crushing weight of thy tumultuous
dance! Hail thou that hast the twin lotuses of thy feet worshipped
by the three worlds, with the gods, Asuras, and men, that dwell in
them; thou, whose body is in shape like a pitcher for the abundant
storing of various splendid successes! Hail, thou, the flame of
whose might blazes forth like twelve fierce suns rising at once;
thou that wast a premature day of doom to the race of the Daityas,
whom Siva, Vishnu, and Indra found hard to conquer! Hail, thou that
wardest off calamity from thy votaries! Hail, thou that diffusest a
blaze of flame with thy hand, while it glitters with thy mighty axe,
that seems anxious to illuminate thee in sport! I fly for refuge to
thee, O Ganesa, that wast worshipped even by Gaurí, in order that her
husband might successfully accomplish his undertaking in the conquest
of Tripura; honour to thee!" When Mrigánkadatta had in these words
praised Ganesa, he spent that night fasting, on a bed of kusa-grass
under that tree. In the same way that prince spent eleven nights,
being engaged in propitiating Ganesa, the king of impediments; and
Srutadhi remained in attendance on him.
And on the night of the twelfth day Ganesa said to him in a dream,
"My son, I am pleased with thee; thy ministers shall be released
from their curse, and thou shalt recover them; and with them thou
shalt go and win Sasánkavatí in due course; and thou shalt return
to thy own city, and rule the whole earth." After Mrigánkadatta had
been thus informed in a dream by the god Ganesa, he woke up, when
the night came to an end, and told Srutadhi the vision that he had
seen. Srutadhi congratulated him on it; and then, in the morning,
the prince bathed and worshipped Ganesa, and proceeded to walk round
the tree in which the god dwelt, with his right hand towards it,
[427] and while he was thus engaged, all his ten ministers came down
from the tree, having been released from the form of fruits, and fell
at his feet. Besides the six who were mentioned before, there were
Vyághrasena and Sthúlabáhu, and Meghabala, and the fourth Dridhamushti.
Then the prince, having recovered all those ministers at the same
instant, with eye, with gestures, [428] and with voice agitated by the
workings of joy, looked at his ministers, one by one, again and again,
exceedingly lovingly, and embraced them, and then spoke to them;
having successfully attained his object. And they, beholding with
tears in their eyes their master, who, after the asceticism which he
had gone through, was slender as a new moon, and having been told the
true explanation of the whole by Srutadhi, felicitated themselves on
having truly a protecting lord.
Then Mrigánkadatta, having attained good hope of accomplishing his
enterprise, joyfully broke his fast with those ministers, who had
performed all necessary ablutions in the tank.
CHAPTER CI.
Then Mrigánkadatta, refreshed by breaking his fast, sat down
with those ministers of his on the bank of that lake. Then he
courteously asked those four ministers, whom he had recovered
that day, for an account of their adventures during the time that
he was separated from them. Thereupon that one of them, who was
called Vyághrasena, said to him, "Listen, prince, I now proceed to
relate our adventures. When I was carried to a distance from you by
the curse of the Nága Párávatáksha, I lost my senses, and in that
state I wandered through the forest by night. At last I recovered
consciousness, but the darkness, which enveloped me, prevented me
from seeing where the cardinal points lay, and what path I ought to
take. At last the night, that grief made long, [429] came to an end;
and in course of time the sun arose, that mighty god, and revealed
all the quarters of the heaven. Then I said to myself 'Alas! Where
can that master of mine be gone? And how will he manage to exist
here alone separated from us? And how am I to recover him? Where
shall I look for him? What course shall I adopt? I had better go to
Ujjayiní; for I may perhaps find him there; for he must go there,
to find Sasánkavatí.' With such hopes I set out slowly for Ujjayiní,
threading that difficult forest that resembled calamity, scorched by
the rays of the sun, that resembled showers of fiery powder.
"And at last, somehow or other, I reached a lake, with full-blown
lotuses for expanded eyes, that seemed to hold converse with me
by means of the sweet cries of its swans and other water-birds;
it stretched forth its ripples like hands; its surface was calm and
broad; [430] the very sight of it took away all grief; and so in all
points it resembled a good man. I bathed in it, and ate lotus-fibres,
and drank water; and while I was lingering on its bank, I saw these
three arrive there, Dridhamushti, and Sthúlabáhu, and Meghabala. And
when we met, we asked one another for tidings of you. And as none of
us knew anything about you, and we suspected the worst, we made up our
minds to abandon the body, being unable to endure separation from you.
"And at that moment a hermit-boy came to bathe in that lake; his name
was Mahátapas, and he was the son of Dírghatapas. He had matted hair,
he diffused a brightness of his own, and he seemed like the god of
Fire, blazing with mighty flame, having become incarnate in the body
of a Bráhman, in order to consume once more the Khándava forest; [431]
he was clothed in the skin of a black antelope, he had an ascetic's
water-vessel in his left hand, and on his right wrist he bore a rosary
of Aksha-seeds by way of a bracelet; the perfumed earth that he used
in bathing was stuck on the horns of the deer that came with him, and
he was accompanied by some other hermit-boys like himself. The moment
he saw us about to throw ourselves into the lake, he came towards us;
for the good are easily melted with compassion, and shew causeless
friendship to all. And he said to us, 'You ought not to commit a crime
characteristic of cowards, for poltroons, with their minds blinded with
grief, fall into the gulfs of calamity, but resolute men, having eyes
enlightened by discernment, behold the right path, and do not fall
into the pit, but assuredly attain their goal. And you, being men of
auspicious appearance, will no doubt attain prosperity; so tell me,
what is your grief? For it grieves my heart to see you thus.'
"When the hermit-boy had said this, I at once told him the whole of
our adventure from the beginning; then that boy, who could read the
future, [432] and his companions, exhorted us with various speeches,
and diverted our minds from suicide. Then the hermit-boy, after he
had bathed, took us to his father's hermitage, which was at no great
distance, to entertain us.
"There that hermit's son bestowed on us the arghya, and made us sit
down in a place, in which even the trees seemed to have entered on a
course of penance, for they stood aloft on platforms of earth, and
lifted on high their branches like arms, and drank in the rays of
the sun. And then he went and asked all the trees in the hermitage,
one after another, for alms. And in a moment his alms-vessel was
filled with fruits, that of themselves dropped from the trees; and
he came back with it to us. And he gave us those fruits of heavenly
flavour, and when we had eaten them, we became, as it were, satisfied
with nectar.
"And when the day came to an end, and the sun descended into the sea,
and the sky was filled with stars, as if with spray flung up by his
fall, and the moon, having put on a white bark-robe of moonlight, had
gone to the ascetic grove on the top of the eastern mountain, [433] as
if desiring to withdraw from the world on account of the fall of the
sun, we went to see the hermits, who had finished all their duties,
and were sitting together in a certain part of the hermitage. We
bowed before them, and sat down, and those great sages welcomed us,
and with kindly words at once asked us whence we came. Then that
hermit-boy told them our history until the time of our entering the
hermitage. Then a wise hermit there, of the name of Kanva, said to us,
'Come, why have you allowed yourselves to become so dispirited, being,
as you are, men of valour? For it is the part of a brave man to display
unbroken firmness in calamity, and freedom from arrogance in success,
and never to abandon fortitude. And great men attain the title of great
by struggling through great difficulties by the aid of resolution,
and accomplishing great things. In illustration of this, listen to
this story of Sundarasena, and hear how he endured hardship for the
sake of Mandáravatí?' When the hermit Kanva had said this, he began, in
the hearing of us and of all the hermits, to tell the following tale."
Story of Sundarasena and Mandáravatí.
There is a country named Nishada, that adorns the face of the northern
quarter; in it there was of old a city of the name of Alaká. In this
city the people were always happy in abundance of all things, [434]
and the only things that never enjoyed repose were the jewel-lamps. In
it there lived a king of the name of Mahásena, and not without reason
was he so named, for his enemies were all consumed by the wonderful
and terrible fire of his valour, which resembled that of the god of
war. That king had a prime minister named Gunapálita, who was like
a second Sesha, for he was a mine of valour, and could bear up, like
that serpent, the weight of the earth. The king, having destroyed his
enemies, laid upon him the weight of his kingdom and devoted himself to
pleasure; and then he had a son born to him by his queen Sasiprabhá,
named Sundarasena. Even when he was a child, he was no child in good
qualities, and the goddesses of valour and beauty chose him for their
self-elected husband.
That prince had five heroic ministers, equal in age and
accomplishments, who had grown up with him from their childhood,
Chandaprabha, and Bhímabhuja, and Vyághraparákrama, and the heroic
Vikramasakti, and the fifth was Dridhabuddhi. And they were all
men of great courage, endowed with strength and wisdom, well-born,
and devoted to their master, and they even understood the cries
of birds. [435] And the prince lived with them in his father's
house without a suitable wife, being unmarried, though he was
grown up. And that heroic Sundarasena and his ministers reflected,
"Courage invincible in assault, and wealth won by his own arm, and a
wife equal to him in beauty become a hero on this earth. Otherwise,
what is the use of this beauty?"
And one day the prince went out of the town to hunt, accompanied by
his soldiers, and by those five companions, and as he was going out, a
certain famous female mendicant named Kátyáyaní, bold from the maturity
of her age, who had just returned from a distant foreign country,
saw him, and said to herself, when she beheld his superhuman beauty,
"Is this the Moon without Rohiní or the god of Love without Rati?" But
when she asked his attendants, and found out that it was the prince,
she was astonished, and praised the marvellousness of the creation of
the Disposer. [436] Then she cried out to the prince from a distance
with a shrill and far reaching voice, "Be victorious, O prince," and
so saying she bowed before him. But at that moment the mind of the
prince was wholly occupied by a conversation which he had begun with
his ministers, and he went on without hearing the female ascetic. But
she was angry, and called out to him in such a loud voice that he
could not help hearing her, "Ho! prince! why do you not listen to
the blessing of such a one as I am? What king or prince is there