587
587 monarch Vikramáditya set out with them and his forces, and reached the city of Ujjayiní . Then, the kings having been dismissed with marks of honour*[1] to their own territories, and the world-gladdening festival of the spring season having arrived, when the creepers began, so to speak, to adorn themselves with flowers for jewels, and the female bees to keep up a concert with their humming, and the ranges of the wood to dance embraced by the wind, and the cuckoos with melodious notes to utter auspicious prayers, king Vikramáditya married on a fortunate day that daughter of the king of Sinhala, and those two heavenly maidens. And Sinhavarman, the eldest brother of the princess of Sinhala, who had come with her, bestowed at the marriage- altar a great heap of jewels.
And at that moment the Yakshiní Madanamanjarí appeared, and gave those two heavenly maidens countless heaps of jewels. The Yakshí said, " How can I ever, king, recompense you for your benefits? But I have done this unimportant service to testify my devotion to you. So you must shew favour to these maidens, and to the deer." When the Yakshí had said this, she departed honoured by the king.
Then the successful king Vikramáditya, having obtained those wives and the earth with all its dvípas, ruled a realm void of opponents; and he enjoyed himself roaming in all the garden grounds; during the hot season living in the water of tanks and in artificial fountain-chambers, during the rains in inner apartments charming on account of the noise of cymbals that arose in them, during the autumn on the tops of palaces, joyous with banquets under the rising moon, during the winter in chambers where comfortable couches were spread, and which were fragrant with black aloes, being ever surrounded by his wives.
Story of Malayavati the man-hating maiden.:—Now this king, being such as I have described, had a painter named Nagarasvámin, who enjoyed the revenues of a hundred villages, and surpassed Viśvakarman. That painter used every two or three days to paint a picture of a girl, and give it as a present to the king, taking care to exemplify different types of beauty.
Now, once on a time, it happened that that painter had, because a feast was going on, forgotten to paint the required girl for the king. And when the day for giving the present arrived, the painter remembered and was bewildered, saying to himself, " Alas ! what can I give to the king?' And at that moment a traveller come from afar suddenly approached him
- ↑ * Dr. Kern would read tammánitaviśŗishțeshu; and this is the reading of the Taylor MS. and of the Sanskrit College MS. No. 3003 has sammánitair,
