Story of Sunda and Upasunda.
There were two brothers, Asuras by race, Sunda and Upasunda, hard to overcome, inasmuch as they surpassed the three worlds in valour. And Brahmá, wishing to destroy them, gave an order to Viśvakarman,[13] and had constructed a heavenly woman named Tilottamá, in order to behold whose beauty even Śiva truly became four-faced, so as to look four ways at once, while she was devoutly circumambulating him. She, by the order of Brahmá, went to Sunda and Upasunda, while they were in the garden of Kailása, in order to seduce them. And both those two Asuras distracted with love, seized the fair one at the same time by both her arms, the moment they saw her near them. And as they were dragging her off in mutual opposition, they soon came to blows, and both of them were destroyed. To whom is not the attractive object called woman the cause of misfortune? And you, though many, have one love, Draupadí, therefore you must without fail avoid quarrelling about her. And by my advice always observe this rule with respect to her. When she is with the eldest, she must be considered a mother by the younger, and when she is with the youngest, she must be considered a daughter-in-law by the eldest. Your ancestors, O king, accepted that speech of mine with unanimous consent, having their minds fixed on salutary counsels. And they were my friends, and it is through love for them that I have come to visit you here, king of Vatsa, therefore I give you this advice. Do you follow the counsel of your ministers, as they followed mine, and in a short time you will gain great success. For some time you will suffer grief, but you must not be too much distressed about it, for it will end in happiness.” After the hermit Nárada, so clever in indirectly intimating future prosperity, had said this duly to the king of Vatsa, he immediately disappeared. And then Yaugandharáyaṇa and all the other ministers, auguring from the speech of that great hermit that the scheme they had in view was about to succeed, became exceedingly zealous about carrying it into effect.
[1] I read dhátá for dhátrá.
[2] i. e. Hastinápura.
[3] Here Wilson observes: The circumstances here related are not without analogies in fact. It is not marvellous therefore that we may trace them in fiction. The point of the story is the same as that of the “Deux Anglais à Paris,” a Fabliau, and of “Une femme à l’extremité qui se mit en si grosse colère voyant son mari qui baisait sa servante qu’elle recouvra la santé” of Margaret of Navarre, (Heptameron. Nouvelle 71). Cp. Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 131.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, Sc. 2, tells a similar story,
“A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him
With several sorts of madmen, which wild object,
Being full of change and sport, freed him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke.”
[4] Cp. Sagas from the far East, Tale XI, pp. 123, 124. Here the crime contemplated is murder, and the ape is represented by a tiger. This story bears a certain resemblance to the termination of Alles aus einer Erbse, Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, p. 22. See also page 220 of the same collection. In the Pentamerone of Basile, Tale 22, a princess is set afloat in a box, and found by a king, whose wife she eventually becomes. There is a similar incident in Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, p. 220.
[5] Literally a handful of water, such as is offered to the Manes, is offered to Fortune. It is all over with his chance of attaining glory.
[6] Cp. Sicilianische Märchen, Vol. I, p. 220. Liebrecht, in note 485 to page 413 of his translation of Dunlop’s History of Fiction, compares this story with one in The Thousand and One Days of a princess of Kashmír, who was so beautiful that every one who saw her went mad, or pined away. He also mentions an Arabian tradition with respect to the Thracian sorceress Rhodope. “The Arabs believe that one of the pyramids is haunted by a guardian spirit in the shape of a beautiful woman, the mere sight of whom drives men mad.” He refers also to Thomas Moore, the Epicurean, Note 6 to Chapter VI, and the Adventures of Hatim Tai, translated by Duncan Forbes, p. 18.
[7] In the original it is intended to compare the locks to the spots in the moon.
[8] Reading yad hi.
[9] The moon was the progenitor of the Páṇḍava race.
[10] One of the five trees of Paradise.
[11] Káma the Hindu Cupid.
[12] There is a certain resemblance in the story of Sunda and Upasunda to that of Otus and Ephialtes; see Preller’s Griechische Mythologie, Vol. I p. 81. Cp. also Grohmann’s Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 35.
[13] The architect or artist of the gods.