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and that it should have been killed, and then that Śankhadatta should
have come out of it alive. Ah ! the way of fate is inscrutable, and wonderful are its works !" While uttering such remarks with Akshakshapanaka and the others, Bhímabhața took Śankhadatta to his own dwelling. And there in high delight he entertained with a bath, clothes, and other needful things, his friend, who had, as it were, been born a second time with the same body from the belly of a fish.
And while Bhímabhața was living with him in that country, there came on there a festive procession in honour of Vásuki the king of the snakes. In order to see it, the prince went, surrounded with his friends, to the temple of that chief of the snakes, where great crowds were assembling. He worshipped there in the temple, where his idol was, which was full of long wreaths*[1] of flowers in form like serpents, and which therefore resembled the abyss of Pátála, and then going in a southerly direction, he beheld a great lake sacred to Vásuki, studded with red lotuses, resembling the concentrated gleams of the brilliance of the jewels on snakes' crests ,†[2] and encircled with blue lotuses, which seemed like clouds of smoke from the fire of snake-poison; overhung with trees, that seemed to be worshipping with their flowers blown down by the wind. When he saw it, he said to himself in astonishment, " Compared with this expanded lake, that sea from which Vishnu carried off the goddess of Fortune, seems to roe to be only worthy of neglect, for its fortune of beauty is not to be taken from it by anything else.‡[3] In the meanwhile he saw a maiden, who had come there to bathe, by name Hansávalí, the beautiful daughter of Chandráditya, king of Láța, by Kuvalayavatí; her mortal nature, which was concealed by all her other members moulded like those of gods, was revealed by the winking of her rolling eye. She had ten million perfections darting forth from her flower-soft body, she was with her waist, that might be spanned with the hand, a very bow of Cupid, and the moment she looked at Bhímabhața, she pierced him in the heart with the sidelong arrows of her eyes, and bewildered him.§[4] He too, who was a thief of the world's beauty, entered by the oblique path of her eyes the treasure-chamber of her heart, and robbed her of her self-control. Then she sent secretly a trustworthy and discreet maid, and enquired from his friends his name and residence. And after she had bathed, she was taken back to her palace by her attendants, frequently turning round her face to fix her eyes on him. And
- ↑ * I read dámabhih for dhámabhih,
- ↑ † Benfey (Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 214, note,) traces this superstition through all countries.
- ↑ ‡ This passage is a concatenation of puns.
- ↑ § The whole passage is an elaborate pun. The lady is compared to a bow, the string of which vibrates in the notches, and the middle of which is held in the hand.
