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is addicted to pleasure, and I do his work, a calumny has been circulated among the people against me, to the effect that I have devoured the realm. And a general rumour, though false, injures even great men in this world; was not Ráma compelled by a slanderous report to abandon his wife Sítá? So what course must I adopt in this emergency?" When the minister said this, his firm-souled wife Medhávatí,*[1] who was rightly named, said to him; " Take leave of the king on the pretext of a pilgrimage to holy bathing- places; it is expedient, great-minded Sir, that you should go to a foreign land for a certain time. So you will be seen to be free from ambition, and the calumny against you will die out; and while you are absent, the king will bear the burden of the kingdom himself, and then this vicious tendency of his will gradually diminish, and when you return, you will be able to discharge your office of minister without blame.
When Dírghadarśin's wife said this to him, he said, " I will do so," and he went and said to the king Yaśahketu in the course of conversation, " Give me leave to depart, king, I am going on a pilgrimage for some days, for my heart is set on that religious duty." When the king heard that, he said, " Do not do so ! Cannot you, without going on pilgrimages, perform in your house noble religious duties, such as charity and so on, which will procure you heaven?" When the minister heard this, he said, " King, that purity which comes of wealth is sought by charity and so on, but holy bathing-places have an everlasting purity. And a wise man must visit them, while he is young; for otherwise how can he be sure of reaching them, as this body cannot be relied on?" While he was saying this, and the king was still trying to dissuade him, a warder entered, and said to the king, " King, the sun is plunging into the middle of the lake of heaven, so rise up, this is the hour appointed for you to bathe in, and it is rapidly passing away." When the king heard this, he immediately rose up to bathe, and the minister, whose heart was set on pilgrimage, bowed before him, and went home to his own house.
There he left his wife, whom he forbade to follow him, and managed cunningly to set out in secret, without even his servants suspecting his departure. And alone he wandered from country to country with resolute perseverance, and visited holy bathing-places, and at last he reached the land of Paundra. In a certain city in that country not far from the sea, he entered a temple of Śiva, and sat down in a courtyard attached to it. There a merchant, named Nidhidatta, who had come to worship the god, saw him exhausted with the heat of the sun's rays, dusty with his long journey. The merchant, being a hospitable man, seeing that the traveller, who was in such a state, wore a Bráhmanical thread, and had auspicious
- ↑ * i.e. wise.
