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And Bandhudattá, out of love for me, and her husband and his servants, attacked the apes with stones and sticks, but were not able to get the better of them. Then those monkeys, as if enraged with my evil actions, pulled off with their teeth and nails every hair from every one of my limbs, as I lay there bewildered. At last, by the virtue of the string on my neck, and by thinking on Śiva, I managed to recover my strength, and getting loose from them, I ran away. And entering into the depths of the wood, I got out of their sight, and gradually, roaming from forest to forest, I reached this wood. And while I was wandering about here in the rainy season, blind with the darkness of grief, saying to myself, " How is it that even in this life adultery has produced for thee the fruit of transformation into the shape of a monkey, and thou hast lost Bandhudattá?" Destiny, not yet sated with tormenting me, inflicted on me another woe, for a female elephant suddenly came upon me, and seizing me with her trunk flung me into the mud of an ant-hill that had been saturated with rain. I know it must have been some divinity instigated by Destiny, for, though I exerted myself to the utmost, I could not get out of that mud. And while it was drying up,*[1] not only did I not die, but knowledge was produced in me, while I thought continually upon Śiva. And all the while I never felt hunger nor thirst, my friend, until to-day you drew me out of this trap of dry mud. And though I have gained knowledge, I do not even now possess power sufficient to set myself free from this monkey nature. But when some witch unties the thread on my neck, reciting at the same time the appropriate spell, then I shall once more become a man.
"This is my story, but tell me now, my friend, how you came to this inaccessible wood, and why." When Niśchayadatta was thus requested by the Bráhman Somasvámin, he told him his story, how he came from Ujjayini on account of a Vidyadharí, and how he was conveyed at night by a Yakshiní, whom he had subdued by his presence of mind. Then the wise Somasvámin, who wore the form of a monkey, having heard that wonderful story, went on to say; " You, like myself, have suffered great woe for the sake of a female. But females, like prosperous circumstances, are never faithful to any one in this world. Like the evening, they display a short-lived glow of passion, their hearts are crooked like the channels of rivers, like snakes they are not to be relied on, like lightning they are fickle. So, that Anurágapará, though she may be enamoured of you for a time, when she finds a paramour of her own race, will be disgusted with you, who are only a mortal. So desist now from this effort for the sake of a female, which you will find like the fruit of the Colocynth, bitter in its
- ↑ * Pandit Śyámá Charana Mukhopádhyáya conjectures áśoshyamáne. This I adopt unhesitatingly.
