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those three remained there day and night, with their eyes exclusively fixed on the moon of her countenance, as if they had taken upon themselves a vow to imitate the partridge.*[1]
Then the maiden Mandáravatí suddenly contracted a burning fever, which ended in her death. Then the young Bráhmans, distracted with grief, carried her when dead, after she had been duly adorned, to the cemetery, and burnt her. And one of them built a hut there and made her ashes his bed, and remained there living on the alms he could get by begging. And the second took her bones and went with them to the Ganges, and the third became an ascetic and went travelling through foreign lands.
As the ascetic was roaming about, he reached a village named Vajraloka. And there he entered as a guest the house of a certain Bráhman. And the Bráhman received him courteously. So he sat down to eat; and in the meanwhile a child there began to cry. When, in spite of all efforts to quiet it, it would not stop, the mistress of the house fell into a passion, and taking it up in her arms, threw it into the blazing fire. The moment the child was thrown in, as its body was soft, it was reduced to ashes. When the ascetic, who was a guest, saw this, his hair stood on end, and he exclaimed, " Alas ! Alas ! I have entered the house of a Bráhman-demon. So I will not eat food here now, for such food would be sin in a visible material shape." When he said this, the householder said to him, "See the power of raising the dead to life inherent in a charm of mine, which is effectual as soon as recited." When he had said this, he took the book containing the charm and read it, and threw on to the ashes some dust, over which the charm had been recited. †[2] That made the boy rise up alive, exactly as he was before. Then the mind of the Bráhman ascetic was quieted, and he was able to take his meal there. And the master of the house put the book up on a bracket, and after taking food, went to bed at night, and so did the ascetic. But when the master of the house was asleep, the ascetic got up timidly, and took the book, with the desire of restoring his beloved to life.
- ↑ * The Chakora is fabled to subsist upon moonbeams.
- ↑ † See the numerous parallels in Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, p. 232; and Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, p. 185, note, where he refers to the story of the Machandel boom (Kinder und Hausmärchen, No. 47), the myth of Zeus and Tantalus, and other stories. In the 47th tale of the Pentamerone of Basile, one of the five sons raises the princess to life and then demands her in marriage. In fact Basile's tale seems to be compounded of this and the 5th of the Vetála's stories. In Prym and Socin's Syrische Märchen, No. XVIII, the bones of a man who had been killed ten years ago, are collected, and the water of life is poured over them with the same result as in our text. There is a " Pergamentblatt" with a life-restoring charm written on it, in Waldau's Böhmische Märchen, p. 353.
