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to convey those tender young sons to the forest. Then, as he was wearied out in the middle of the forest, another Bráhman came up to him, and asked him for his horseless chariot. He gave it to him without the slightest hesitation, and the resolute fellow, going along on his feet, with his wife and sons, at last with difficulty reached the grove of mortification. There he took up his abode at the foot of a tree, and lived with deer for his only retinue, nobly waited on by his wife Mádrí. And the forest regions ministered to the heroic prince, while living in this kingdom of devotion; their clusters of flowers waving in the wind were his beautiful chowries, broad-shaded trees were his umbrellas, leaves his bed, rocks his thrones,
bees his singing-women, and various fruits his savoury viands.
Now, one day, his wife Mádrí left the hermitage to gather fruits and flowers for him with her own hands, and a certain old Bráhman came and asked Tárávaloka, who was in his hut, for his sons Ráma and Lakshmana. Tárávaloka said to himself, " I shall be better able to endure letting these sons of mine, though they are quite infants, be led away,*[1] than I could possibly manage to endure the sending a suppliant away disappointed: the fact is, cunning fate is eager to see my resolution give way": then he gave those sons to the Bráhman. And when the Bráhman tried to take them away, they refused to go ; then he tied their hands and beat them with creepers; and as the cruel man took them away, they kept crying for their mother, and turning round and looking at their father with tearful eyes. Even when Tárávaloka saw that, he was unmoved, but the whole world of animate and inanimate existences was moved at his fortitude.
Then the virtuous Mádrí slowly returned tired from a remote part of the forest to her husband's hermitage, bringing with her flowers, fruits and roots. And she saw her husband, who had his face sadly fixed on the ground, but she could not see anywhere those sons of hers, though their toys, in the form of horses, chariots, and elephants of clay, were scattered about. Her heart foreboded calamity, and she said excitedly to her husband " Alas ! I am ruined ! Where are my little sons?" Her husband slowly answered her, " Blameless one, I gave those two little sons away to a poor Bráhman, who asked for them." When the good lady heard that, she rose superior to her distraction, and said to her husband, " Then you did well: how could you allow a suppliant to go away disappointed?" When she said this, the equally matched goodness of that married couple made the earth tremble, and the throne of Indra rock.
Then Indra saw by his profound meditation that the world was made to tremble by virtue of the heroic generosity of Mádrí and Tárávaloka.
- ↑ * India Office MS. No. 1882 reads nitau; the other two seem to omit the lines altogether.
