Story of Somasvámin.
In the city of Váráṇasí there is an excellent Bráhman named Chandrasvámin, I am his son by his virtuous wife, my friend. And my father gave me the name of Somasvámin. In course of time it came to pass that I mounted the fierce elephant of love, which infatuation makes uncontrollable. When I was at this stage of my life, the youthful Bandhudattá, the daughter of the merchant Śrígarbha, an inhabitant of that city, and the wife of the great merchant of Mathurá Varáhadatta, who was dwelling in her father’s house, beheld me one day, as she was looking out of the window. She was enamoured of me on beholding me, and after enquiring my name, she sent a confidential female friend to me, desiring an interview. Her friend came up secretly to me who was blind with love, and, after telling her friend’s desire, took me to her house. There she placed me, and then went and brought secretly Bandhudattá, whose eagerness made her disregard shame. And no sooner was she brought, than she threw her arms round my neck, for excessive love in women is your only hero for daring. Thus every day Bandhudattá came at will from her father’s house, and sported with me in the house of her female friend.
Now one day the great merchant, her husband, came from Mathurá to take her back to his own house, as she had been long absent. Then Bandhudattá, as her father ordered her to go, and her husband was eager to take her away, secretly made a second request to her friend. She said “I am certainly going to be taken by my husband to the city of Mathurá, and I cannot live there separated from Somasvámin. So tell me what resource there is left to me in this matter.” When she said this, her friend Sukhaśayá, who was a witch, answered her, “I know two spells;[9] by reciting one of them a man can be in a moment made an ape, if a string is fastened round his neck, and by the second, if the string is loosed, he will immediately become a man again; and while he is an ape his intelligence is not diminished. So if you like, fair one, you can keep your lover Somasvámin; for I will turn him into an ape on the spot, then take him with you to Mathurá as a pet animal. And I will shew you how to use the two spells, so that you can turn him, when near you, into the shape of a monkey, and when you are in a secret place, make him once more a beloved man.” When her friend had told her this, Bandhudattá consented, and sending for me in secret, told me that matter in the most loving tone. I consented, and immediately Sukhaśayá fastened a thread on my neck and recited the spell, and made me a young monkey. And in that shape Bandhudattá brought and shewed me to her husband, and she said—“A friend of mine gave me this animal to play with.” And he was delighted when he saw me in her arms as a plaything, and I, though a monkey, retained my intelligence, and the power of articulate speech. And I remained there, saying to myself with inward laughter—“Wonderful are the actions of women.” For whom does not love beguile? The next day Bandhudattá, having been taught that spell by her friend, set out from her father’s house to go to Mathurá with her husband. And the husband of Bandhudattá, wishing to please her, had me carried on the back of one of his servants during the journey. So the servant and I and the rest went along, and in two or three days reached a wood, that lay in our way, which was perilous from abounding in monkeys. Then the monkeys, beholding me, attacked me in troops on all sides, quickly calling to one another with shrill cries. And the irrepressible apes came and began to bite that merchant’s servant, on whose back I was sitting. He was terrified at that, and flung me off his back on to the ground, and fled for fear, so the monkeys got hold of me then and there. And Bandhudattá, out of love for me, and her husband and his servants, attacked the apes with stones and sticks, but were not able to get the better of them. Then those monkeys, as if enraged with my evil actions, pulled off with their teeth and nails every hair from every one of my limbs, as I lay there bewildered. At last, by the virtue of the string on my neck, and by thinking on Śiva, I managed to recover my strength, and getting loose from them, I ran away. And entering into the depths of the wood, I got out of their sight, and gradually, roaming from forest to forest, I reached this wood. And while I was wandering about here in the rainy season, blind with the darkness of grief, saying to myself, “How is it that even in this life adultery has produced for thee the fruit of transformation into the shape of a monkey, and thou hast lost Bandhudattá?” Destiny, not yet sated with tormenting me, inflicted on me another woe, for a female elephant suddenly came upon me, and seizing me with her trunk flung me into the mud of an ant-hill that had been saturated with rain. I know it must have been some divinity instigated by Destiny, for, though I exerted myself to the utmost, I could not get out of that mud. And while it was drying up,[10] not only did I not die, but knowledge was produced in me, while I thought continually upon Śiva. And all the while I never felt hunger nor thirst, my friend, until to-day you drew me out of this trap of dry mud. And though I have gained knowledge, I do not even now possess power sufficient to set myself free from this monkey nature. But when some witch unties the thread on my neck, reciting at the same time the appropriate spell, then I shall once more become a man.
“This is my story, but tell me now, my friend, how you came to this inaccessible wood, and why.” When Niśchayadatta was thus requested by the Bráhman Somasvámin, he told him his story, how he came from Ujjayiní on account of a Vidyádharí, and how he was conveyed at night by a Yakshiṇí, whom he had subdued by his presence of mind. Then the wise Somasvámin, who wore the form of a monkey, having heard that wonderful story, went on to say; “You, like myself, have suffered great woe for the sake of a female. But females, like prosperous circumstances, are never faithful to any one in this world. Like the evening, they display a short-lived glow of passion, their hearts are crooked like the channels of rivers, like snakes they are not to be relied on, like lightning they are fickle. So, that Anurágapará, though she may be enamoured of you for a time, when she finds a paramour of her own race, will be disgusted with you, who are only a mortal. So desist now from this effort for the sake of a female, which you will find like the fruit of the Colocynth, bitter in its after-taste. Do not go, my friend, to Pushkarávatí, the city of the Vidyádharas, but ascend the back of the Yakshiṇí and return to your own Ujjayiní. Do what I tell you, my friend; formerly in my passion I did not heed the voice of a friend, and I am suffering for it at this very moment. For when I was in love with Bandhudattá, a Bráhman named Bhavaśarman, who was a very dear friend of mine, said this to me in order to dissuade me;—‘Do not put yourself in the power of a female, the heart of a female is a tangled maze; in proof of it I will tell you what happened to me—listen!’”