372
Story of king Vilásaśila and the Physician Tarunachandra.:— There dwelt in a city named Vilásapura, the home of Śiva, a king rightly named Vilásaśila.*[1] He had a queen named Kamalaprabhá, whom he valued as his life, and he long remained with her addicted to pleasure only. Then in course of time there came upon the king old age, the thief of beauty, and when he beheld it, he was sorely grieved. He thought to himself " How can I shew to the queen my face marred with grey hairs like a snow-smitten lotus ? Alas ! it is better that I should die." Busied with reflections like these, the king summoned into his hall of audience a physician named Tarunachandra †[2] and thus spake to him respectfully " My good man, because you are clever and devoted to me, I ask you whether there is any artifice by which this old age can be averted. When Tarunachandra, who was rightly named as being only of the magnitude of one digit, and desiring to become a full moon, heard that, the cunning fellow reflected " I must make my profit out of this blockhead of a king, and I shall soon discover the means of doing it." Having thus reflected, the physician said to the king: " If you will remain in an underground chamber alone, O king, for eight months, and take this medicine, I engage to remove your old age." When the king heard this, he had such an underground chamber prepared, for fools intent on objects of sense cannot endure reflection. But the ministers used arguments like the following with him " king, by the goodness and asceticism and self-denial of men of old time, and by the virtue of the age, elixirs were produced. But these forest remedies ‡[3] which we hear of now, O king, owing to the want of proper materials, produce the opposite effect to that which is intended, and this is quite in accordance with the treatises; for rogues do in this way make sport with fools. Does time past ever return, king?" Still these arguments did not penetrate into his soul, for it was encased in the thick armour of violent sensual desire. And in accordance with the advice of that physician, he entered that underground chamber alone, excluding the numerous retinue that usually waits upon a king. And alone with one servant belonging to that physician, he made himself a slave to the taking of drugs and the rest of the treatment. And the king remained there in that dark subterranean den, which seemed as if it were the overflowing, through abundance, of the ignorance of his heart. And after the king had spent six months in that underground chamber, that wicked physician, seeing that his senility had increased, brought a certain young
