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upon the leper continued, " Listen, I will tell you something, A rogue here, named Śaśin, being jealous of his wife, locked her up in a cellar with one servant to attend on her, and went to a foreign land. But that wife of his happened to see me here, and immediately surrendered herself to me, her heart being drawn towards me by love. And I spend every night with her, for the maid takes me on her back and carries me in. So tell me if I am not the god of love. Who, that was the favoured lover of the beautiful wife of S^a^in, could care for other women?'* "When Śaśin heard this speech of the leper's, he suppressed his grief, intolerable as a hurricane, and wishing to discover the truth, he said to the leper, " In truth you are the god of love, so I have a boon to crave of your godship, I feel great curiosity about this lady from your description of her, so I will go there this very night disguised as yourself. Be propitious to your suppliant: you will lose but little, as you can attain this object every day," When Śaśin made this request, the leper said to him; " So be it ! take this dress of mine and give me yours, and remain covering up your hands and feet with your clothes, as you see me do, until her maid comes, which will be as soon as it becomes dark. And she will mistake you for me, and put you on her back, and you must submit to go there in that fashion, for I always have to go in that way, having lost the use of my hands and feet from leprosy." Thereupon Śaśin put on the leper's dress and remained there, but the leper and Śaśin's two companions remained a little way off.
Then Śaśin's wife's maid came, and supposing that he was the leper, as he had his dress on, said, " Come along," and took him up on her back. And so she took him at night into that cellar to his wife, she was expecting her paramour the leper. Then Śaśin made out for certain that it was his wife, who was lamenting there in the darkness, by feeling her limbs, and he became an ascetic on the spot. And when she was asleep, he went out unobserved, and made his way to Dhanadeva and Rudrasoma. And he told them his experiences, and said in his grief, " Alas ! women are like torrents that flow in a ravine, they are ever tending downwards, capricious, beautiful at a distance, prone to turbidness, and so they are as difficult to guard as such rivers are to drink, and thus my wife, though kept in a cellar, has run after a leper. So for me also the forest is the best thing. Out on family life !" And so he spent the night in the company of the merchant and the Brahman, whose affliction was the same as his. And next morning they all set out together for the forest, and at evening they reached a tree by the roadside, with a tank at its foot. And after they had eaten and drunk, they ascended the tree to sleep, and while they were there, they saw a traveller come and lie down underneath the tree.
Story of the snake-god and his wife.:— And soon they saw another man arise from the tank, and he brought
