Hariśikha’s account of his adventures.
Then Hariśikha said;—On that occasion when I was seized by my enemy, some divinity saved me and deposited me in Ujjayiní. There I was so unhappy that I conceived the design of abandoning the body; so at nightfall I went into the cemetery and proceeded to construct a pyre with the logs there. I lighted it and began to worship the fire, and while I was thus engaged, a prince of the demons, named Tálajangha, came up to me, and said to me, “Why do you enter the fire? Your master is alive, and you shall be united with him, now that he has obtained the supernatural powers he desired.” With these words, the demon, though naturally cruel, lovingly dissuaded me from death; even some stones melt when fate is propitious. Then I went and remained for a long time performing asceticism in front of the god; and some divinity has to-day brought me to your side, my liege.
Thus Hariśikha told his tale, and the others in their turn told theirs, and then, at the suggestion of Amitagati, king Naraváhanadatta incited the venerable Dhanavatí, adored by the Vidyádharas, to bestow all the sciences on those ministers of his also. Then all his ministers also became Vidyádharas; and Dhanavatí said, “Now conquer your enemies;” so on a fortunate day the hero gave orders that the imperial troops should march out towards the city of Gaurímuṇḍa, called Govindakúṭa.
Then the army of the Vidyádharas mounted up into the sky, obscuring the sun, looking like a rising of Ráhu out of due time chilling to the foe. And Naraváhanadatta himself ascended the pericarp of the lotus-chariot, and placed his wives on the filaments, and his friends on the leaves, and preceded by Chaṇḍasinha and the others, set out through the air to conquer his enemies. And when he had completed half his journey, he came to the palace of Dhanavatí which was called Mátangapura, and he stayed there that day, and she did the honours of the house to him. And while he was there, he sent an ambassador to challenge to the combat the Vidyádhara princes Gaurímuṇḍa and Mánasavega.
The next day he deposited his wives in Mátangapura, and went with the Vidyádhara kings to Govindakúṭa. There Gaurímuṇḍa and Mánasavega came out to fight with them, and Chaṇḍasinha and his colleagues met them face to face. When the battle began, brave warriors fell like trees marked out for the axe, and torrents of blood flowed on the mountain Govindakúṭa. The combat, eager to devour the lives of heroes, yawned like a demon of destruction, with tongues in the form of flexible swords greedily licking up blood.[12] That great feast of slaughter, terrible with the rhythmic clapping of hands on the part of Vetálas drunk with blood and flesh, and covered with palpitating corpses for dancers, gave great delight to the demons.
Then Mánasavega met Naraváhanadatta face to face in the conflict, and the prince himself rushed on him in wrath. And having rushed on him, that emperor seized the villain by the hair, and at once cut off his head with his sword. When Gaurímuṇḍa saw that, he too sprang forward in a fury, and Naraváhanadatta dragged him along by the hair, for the power of his science left him as soon as he saw the prince, and flung him on the ground, and seizing his legs whirled him round in the air, and dashed him to pieces on a rock. In this way he slew Gaurímuṇḍa and Mánasavega; and the rest of their army, being terrified,[13] took to flight. And a rain of flowers fell into the lap of that emperor, and all the gods in heaven exclaimed, “Bravo! Bravo!” Then Naraváhanadatta, with all those kings that followed him, entered the palace of Gaurímuṇḍa; and immediately the chiefs of the Vidyádharas, who were connected with Gaurímuṇḍa’s party, came and submitted humbly to his sway.
Then Dhanavatí came up to that sovereign in the midst of the rejoicings on account of his having taken possession of his kingdom after slaying all his enemies, and said to him, “My liege, Gaurímuṇḍa has left a daughter named Ihátmatiká, the belle of the three worlds; you should marry that maiden.” When she said this to the king, he immediately sent for the girl, and married her, and passed the day very happily in her society.
The next morning he sent Vegavatí and Prabhávatí, and had Madanamanchuká brought by them from the town of Mánasavega. When brought, she looked upon that hero in his prosperity, who had destroyed the darkness of his enemies, with face expanded and wet with tears of joy; and at the end of her night of separation she enjoyed indescribable happiness, like a lotus-bed, the open flowers of which are wet with dew. Then he bestowed on her all the sciences, and having pined for her long, he exulted in the society of his beloved, who had thus in a moment attained the rank of a Vidyádharí. And in the garden of Gaurímuṇḍa’s city he spent those days with his wives in the joys of a banquet. And then he sent Prabhávatí, and had Bhagírathayaśas also brought there, and bestowed on her the sciences.
And one day, as the emperor was sitting in his hall of audience, two Vidyádharas came and said to him with due respect, “Your majesty, we went hence, by the orders of Dhanavatí, to the northern division of the land of the Vidyádharas, to find out the movements of Mandaradeva. And there we, being ourselves invisible, saw that king of the Vidyádharas in his hall of audience, and he happened to be saying with regard to your Highness, ‘I hear, that Naraváhanadatta has obtained the sovereignty over the Vidyádharas, and has slain Gaurímuṇḍa and the rest of his opponents; so it will not do for me to overlook that enemy; on the contrary, I must nip him in the bud.’ When we heard that speech of his, we came here to tell you.”
When the assembly of Naraváhanadatta’s partizans heard this from the spies, they were all beside themselves with anger, and appeared like a lotus-bed smitten by the wind. The arms of Chitrángada, frequently waved and extended, seemed with the tinkling of their bracelets to be demanding the signal for combat. The necklace of Amitagati, rising up on his breast, as he sighed with anger, seemed to say again and again, “Rouse thyself, rouse thyself, hero.” Pingalagándhára, striking the ground with his hand so that it resounded, seemed to be going through a prelude introductory to the crushing of his enemies. A frown took its seat upon the face of Váyupatha, looking like a bow strung by Fate for the destruction of his foes. Chaṇḍasinha, angrily pressing one hand against the other, seemed to say, “Even thus will I pulverize my enemies.” The arm of Ságaradatta, struck by his hand, produced a sound that rang through the air, and seemed to challenge that foe. But Naraváhanadatta, though angry, was no whit disturbed; for imperturbability is the characteristic sign of the greatness of great ones.
Then he resolved to march forth to conquer his enemy, after obtaining the jewels essential to an emperor of the Vidyádharas. So the emperor mounted a chariot, with his wives and his ministers, and set out from that Govindakúṭa. And all his partizans, the kings of the Gandharvas and the chiefs of the Vidyádharas, accompanied by their armies, marched along with him, encircling him, as the planets do the moon. Then Naraváhanadatta reached the Himálayas, preceded by Dhanavatí, and found there a large lake. With its white lotuses like lofty umbrellas and its soaring swans like waving chowries, it seemed to have brought a present fit for a sovereign. With its lofty waves flung up towards him like beckoning hands at no great distance, it seemed to summon him again and again to take the bath which should ensure him supreme sovereignty. Then Váyupatha said to the king, “My emperor, you must go down and bathe in this lake;” so he went down to bathe in it. And a heavenly voice said, “None but an emperor can ever succeed in bathing in this lake, so now you may consider the imperial dignity secured to you.”
When the emperor heard that, he was delighted, and he sported in the water of that lake with his wives, as Varuṇa does in the sea. He took pleasure in watching them with the moist garments clinging to their bodies, with the fastenings of their hair loosened, and their eyes reddened by the washing into them of antimony. The rows of birds, flying up with loud cries from that lake, appeared like the girdles of its presiding nymphs advancing to meet him. And the lotuses, eclipsed by the beauty of the lotus-like faces of his wives, plunged beneath the waves as if ashamed. And after bathing, Naraváhanadatta, with his attendants, spent that day on the bank of that lake.
There the successful prince, with his wives and ministers, spent his time in jocose conversation, and next morning he set forth thence in his chariot with his army. And as he was going along, he reached the city of Váyupatha, which lay in his way; and he stayed there a day to please him. There he fell in love with a maiden, that he came across in a garden, the sister of Váyupatha, by name Váyuvegayaśas. She, while amusing herself in a garden on the bank of the Hemabáluka[14] river, saw him arrive, and though in love with him, disappeared at once. Then Naraváhanadatta, supposing that she had turned her back on him for some reason other than the real one, returned with downcast face to his quarters. There the queens found out the adventure that had befallen the king by means of Marubhúti who was with him, (for Gomukha was too clever for them to try him,) and then they made all kinds of jokes at the king’s expense, while Gomukha stood by ashamed at the indiscretion of Marubhúti.
Then Gomukha, seeing the king out of countenance, consoled him, and, in order to ascertain the real sentiments of Váyuvegayaśas, went to her city. There Váyupatha saw him suddenly arrived as if to take a look at the city, and he lovingly entertained him, and taking him aside, said to him, “I have an unmarried sister named Váyuvegayaśas, and holy seers have prophesied that she is destined to be the wife of an emperor. So I am desirous of giving her as a present to the emperor Naraváhanadatta; pray do your best to bring about the accomplishment of my wish. And with this very object in view I was preparing to come to you.” When the minister Gomukha had been thus addressed by Váyupatha, he said to him; “Although this prince of ours set out primarily with the object of conquering his enemies, still you have only to make the request, and I will arrange this matter for you.” With these words Gomukha took leave of him, and going back informed Naraváhanadatta that he had gained his object without any solicitation.
And the next day Váyupatha came in person and requested the favour, and the sagacious Gomukha said to the king, “My prince, you must not refuse the request of Váyupatha; he is your faithful ally; your majesty should do whatever he asks.” Then the king consented to do it; and Váyupatha himself brought his younger sister, and bestowed her on the emperor against her will. And while the marriage was being performed, she exclaimed, “Ye guardians of the world, I am being bestowed in marriage by my brother by force, and against my will, so I have not committed any sin thereby.” When she said this, all the females belonging to Váyupatha’s household made such a noise that no outsiders heard what she said. But the king was put out of countenance by her speech, so Gomukha was anxious to find some means of ascertaining its import, and he roamed hither and thither with that object.
And after he had roamed about awhile, he saw in a certain retired spot four Vidyádhara maidens preparing to enter the fire at the same time. And when he asked them the cause, those fair ones told him how Váyuvegayaśas had broken her solemn agreement. Then Gomukha went and told it to king Naraváhanadatta in the presence of all there, exactly as he had seen and heard. When the king heard it, he smiled, but Váyuvegayaśas said, “Arise, my husband, let us two quickly go and save these maidens; afterwards I will tell you the reason of this act of theirs.” When she said this to the king, he went with her and with all his followers to the spot where the tragedy was to take place.
And he saw those maidens with a blazing fire in front of them; and Váyuvegayaśas, after dragging them away from it, said to the king, “This first here is Káliká, the daughter of the lord of Kálakúṭa, and this second is Vidyutpunjá, the daughter of Vidyutpunja; and this third is Matanginí, the daughter of Mandara; and this fourth is Padmaprabhá the daughter of Mahádanshṭra; and I am the fifth; all we five, when we saw you performing asceticism in the domain of the Siddhas, were bewildered with love, and we made the following mutual agreement, ‘We will all five[15] at the same time take this prince as our dear husband, and no one of us must surrender herself to him alone; if any one of us marries him separately, the others shall enter the fire to bring down vengeance on her who has been guilty of such treachery to friends.’ It was out of respect for this agreement that I did not wish to marry you separately; indeed I did not even to-day give myself to you; you, my husband, and the guardians of the world can bear testimony as to whether even now I have broken this agreement willingly. So now, my husband, marry also those friends of mine; and you, my friends, must not let any other lot befall you.”[16]
When she said this, those maidens, who had escaped from death, rejoiced and embraced one another; and the king was delighted in his heart. And the fathers of the ladies, hearing what had taken place, came there immediately, and bestowed their daughters on Naraváhanadatta. And those chiefs of the Vidyádharas, headed by the lord of Kálakúṭa,[17] agreed to accept the sovereignty of their son-in-law. Thus Naraváhanadatta obtained at one stroke the daughters of five great Vidyádharas, and gained great importance thereby.
And the prince remained there some days with those wives, and then his Commander-in-Chief Hariśikha said, “Why, my liege, though you are versed in the approved treatises on the subject, do you act contrary to policy? What means this devotion on your part to the pleasures of love, when it is time to fight? This raising of an expedition to conquer Mandaradeva, and this your dallying for so many days with your wives, are things wholly incompatible.” When Hariśikha said this, the great king answered him, “Your reproof is just, but I am not acting for my own pleasure in all this; this allying of myself with wives involves the acquisition of friends; and is so the most efficacious method at present of crushing the foe; this is why I have had recourse to it. So let these my troops now advance to the conquest of the enemy!”
When the king had given this order, his father-in-law Mandara said to him, “King, that Mandaradeva lives in a distant and difficult country, and he will be hard for you to overcome until you have achieved all the distinctive jewels of an emperor. For he is protected by the cave, called the cave of Triśírsha,[18] which forms the approach to his kingdom, and the entrance of which is guarded by the great champion Devamáya. But that cave can be forced by an emperor who has obtained the jewels. And the sandal-wood tree, which is one of the jewels of an emperor, is in this country, so quickly gain possession of it, in order that you may attain the ends you have in view. For no one who is not an emperor ever gets near that tree.”
Having heard this from Mandara, Naraváhanadatta set out at night, fasting and observing a strict vow, for that sandal-wood tree. As the hero went along, very terrible portents arose to bewilder him, but he was not terrified at them, and so he reached the foot of that mighty tree. And when he saw that sandal-wood tree surrounded with a lofty platform made of precious jewels, he climbed up to it with ladders and adored it. The tree then said to him with bodiless voice, “Emperor, thou hast won me the sandal-wood tree, and when thou thinkest on me, I will appear to thee, so leave this place at present, and go to Govindakúṭa; thus thou wilt win the other jewels also; and then thou wilt easily conquer Mandaradeva.” On hearing this, Naraváhanadatta, the mighty sovereign of the Vidyádharas, said, “I will do so,” and being now completely successful, he worshipped that heavenly tree,[19] and went delighted through the air to his own camp.
There he spent that night; and the next morning in the hall of audience he related at full length, in the presence of all, his night’s adventure by which he had won the sandal-wood tree. And when they heard it, his wives, and the ministers who had grown up with him from infancy, and those Vidyádharas who were devoted to him, namely, Váyupatha and the other chiefs with their forces, and the Gandharvas, headed by Chitrángada, were delighted at this sudden attainment of great success, and praised his heroism remarkable for its uninterrupted flow of courage, enterprise, and firmness. And after deliberating with them, the king, determined to overthrow the pride of Mandaradeva, set out in a heavenly chariot for the mountain of Govindakúṭa, in order to obtain the other jewels spoken of by the sandal-wood tree.
[1] Compare Webster’s play, The Duchess of Malfy, where the Duchess says
What witchcraft doth he practise, that he hath left
A dead man’s hand here?
[2] I read antargṛiham as one word.
[3] In the above wild story the hero has to endure the assaults of the witches on three successive nights. So in the story of the Headless Princess (Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 271) the priest’s son has to read the psalter over the dead princess three nights running. He is hardest pressed on the last night; and on each occasion at day-break the “devilry vanished.” In the same way in The Soldier’s Midnight Watch (ib. p. 274) the soldier has three nights of increasing severity. So in Southey’s Old Woman of Berkeley, the assaults continue for three nights, and on the third are successful.
[4] Kuhn in his Westfälische Sagen, Vol. II, p. 29, gives a long list of herbs that protect men from witches. The earliest instance in literature is perhaps that Moly,
“That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.”
See also Bartsch, Sagen aus Meklenburg, Vol. II, p. 37.
[5] See Vol. I, pp. 224 and 576, and p. 268 of the present volume. To the parallels quoted by Ralston may be added, Prym and Socin’s Syrische Sagen, p. 116; Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 94; and Coelho’s Contos Portuguezes, p. 63.
[6] Cp. Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. II, pp. 341, 342. Here Hagen steals the clothes of some Meerweiber, who were bathing in the Danube; in this way he induces the elder of the two to prophesy the fate of himself and his companions at the court of Attila. In the Russian story of Vasilissa the Wise (Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 126,) the hero steals Vasilissa’s shift. She promises to do him good service if he gives it back, which he does. She turned into a spoonbill and flew away after her companions. (See Ralston’s remarks on p. 120.) We find the incident of stealing the robes of bathing nymphs in Prym and Socin’s Syrische Sagen und Märchen, p. 116; in Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 250; Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, pp. 119–130; Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Part I, p. 31, (with Köhler’s notes). In the above tales the dress stolen is what our great folk-lore authority terms a “plumage-robe.”
The Nereids in modern Greek stories are swan-maidens; see Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen und Sagen, p. 134. The subject of Swan Maidens is thoroughly worked out by Baring Gould in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, New edition, pp. 561–578. See also Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, pp. 263 and ff. He expresses his firm conviction that tales of this kind will be found in Indian collections.
[7] Or possibly, “clothed in moisture.”
[8] The three India Office MSS. read sam̱stavád.
[9] Cp. Vol. I, p. 250; and for what follows p. 230 of the same volume.
[10] Cp. p. 8 of this volume and the note there. In Sagas from the Far East there is a story of a gold-spitting prince. In Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Quaddaruni’s sister drops pearls and precious stones from her hair whenever she combs it. Dr. Köhler in his note on this tale gives many European parallels. In a Swedish story a gold ring falls from the heroine’s mouth whenever she speaks, and in a Norwegian story gold coins. I may add to the parallels quoted by Dr. Köhler, No. 36 in Coelho’s Contos Portuguezes, in which tale pearls drop from the heroine’s mouth.
[11] All the India Office MSS. read ’dyápi for yo ’pi and two seem to read ápátane. I find ápatana in the Petersburg lexicon, but not ápátana. I have translated the passage loosely so as to make a good sense. The Sanskrit College MS. gives a reading which exactly suits my translation; Sachandrárdhaḥ Śivo ’dyápi Harir yaś cha sakaustubhaḥ Tattayorvedmi kuṭṭanyá gochar ápatane phalam.
[12] More literally “smeared with blood and relishing it.” Böhtlingk and Roth seem to think rasat refers to some noise made by the swords.
[13] All the India Office MSS. read bhitam for the bhímam of Brockhaus’s text.
[14] The word means “having sands of gold.”
[15] The word asm̱ábhir has been omitted in Brockhaus’s text. It follows panchabhir in the three India Office MSS. and in the Sanskrit College MS.
[16] Two of the India Office MSS. have bháraníyam̱. In the third the passage is omitted. But the text of Brockhaus gives a good sense.
[17] I read prashṭhás which I find in two of the India Office MSS. No. 1882 has prasthás.
[18] An epithet of Śiva.
[19] See Vol. I, pp. 153 and 575. Cf. also the story of Aschenkatze in the Pentamerone of Basile, Vol. I, p. 83; the Dummedhajátaka, Ed. Fausböll, Vol. I, p. 259; Preller, Römische Mythologie, p. 96; Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Vol. I, pp. 241, 242, 244, 245; Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII, 722–724, and 743 and ff; and Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, Introduction, p. lii.