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shoulder; " King, what is the meaning of this persistency of yours? Go, enjoy the good of the night; it is not fitting that you should carry me to that wicked mendicant. However, if you are obstinately beat on it, so be it; but listen to this one story."
Story of the Bráhman boy, who offered himself up to save the life of the king.—There is a city Called Chitrakúța,*[1] rightly so named, where the established divisions of the castes never step across the strict line of demarcation. In it there lived a king, named Chandrávaloka, the crest- jewel of kings, who rained showers of nectar into the eyes of those devoted to him. Wise men praised him as the binding-post of the elephant of valour, the fountain-head of generosity, and the pleasure-pavilion of beauty. There was one supreme sorrow in the heart of that young prince, that, though ho enjoyed all kinds of prosperity, he could not obtain a suitable wife.
Now, one day, the king, accompanied by mounted attendants, went out to a great forest to hunt, in order to dispel that sorrow. There he cleft with continual shafts the herds of wild swine, as the sun, shining in the dun sky,†[2] disperses the darkness with his rays. Surpassing Arjuna in strength, he made the lions, impetuous in fight, and terrible with their yellow manes, repose upon beds of arrows. Like Indra in might, he stripped of their wings‡[3] the mountain-like Śarabhas, and laid them low with the blows of his darts hard as the thunder-bolt. In the ardour of the chase he felt a longing to penetrate into the centre of the wood alone, so he urged on his horse with a smart blow of his heel. The horse, being exceedingly excited by that blow of his heel, and by a stroke of the whip, cared neither for rough nor smooth, but darting on with a speed exceeding that of the wind, in a moment traversed ten yojanas, and carried the king, the functions of whose senses were quite paralysed, to another forest.
There the horse stopped, and the king, having lost his bearings, roam- ed about wearied, until he saw near him a broad lake, which seemed to make signs to him to approach with its lotuses, that, bent down towards him and then raised again by the wind, seemed like beckoning hands.§[4] So he went up to it, and relieved his horse by taking off its saddle and letting it roll, and bathed and watered it, and then tied it up in the shade of a tree, and gave it a heap of grass. Then he bathed himself, and drank water,
- ↑ * i.e., wonderful peak.
- ↑ † Hero there is probably a pun. The phrase may mean that the king delighted in the dark-grey skins of the pigs.
- ↑ ‡ This alludes to Indra's clipping with his bolts the wings of the mountains. The Śarabha is a fabulous eight-legged animal.
- ↑ § The natives of India beckon in this way.
