The story of king Prasenajit and the Bráhman who lost his treasure.
There is a city named Śrávastí, and in it there lived in old time a king of the name of Prasenajit, and one day a strange Bráhman arrived in that city. A merchant, thinking he was virtuous, because he lived on rice in the husk, provided him a lodging there in the house of a Bráhman. There he was loaded by him every day with presents of unhusked rice and other gifts, and gradually by other great merchants also, who came to hear his story. In this way the miserly fellow gradually accumulated a thousand dínárs, and, going to the forest, he dug a hole and buried it in the ground,[4] and he went every day and examined the spot. Now one day he saw that the hole, in which he had hidden his gold, had been re-opened, and that all the gold had gone. When he saw that hole empty, his soul was smitten, and not only was there a void in his heart, but the whole universe seemed to him to be void also. And then he came crying to the Bráhman, in whose house he lived, and when questioned, he told him his whole story: and he made up his mind to go to a holy bathing-place, and starve himself to death. Then the merchant, who supplied him with food, hearing of it, came there with others, and said to him, “Bráhman, why do you long to die for the loss of your wealth? Wealth, like an unseasonable cloud, suddenly comes and goes.” Though plied by him with these and similar arguments, he would not abandon his fixed determination to commit suicide, for wealth is dearer to the miser than life itself. But when the Bráhman was going to the holy place to commit suicide, the king Prasenajit himself, having heard of it, came to him and asked him, “Bráhman, do you know of any mark by which you can recognize the place where you buried your dínárs?” When the Bráhman heard that, he said: “There is a small tree in the wood there, I buried that wealth at its foot.” When the king heard that, he said, “I will find that wealth and give it back to you, or I will give it you from my own treasury, do not commit suicide, Bráhman.” After saying this, and so diverting the Bráhman from his intention of committing suicide, the king entrusted him to the care of the merchant, and retired to his palace. There he pretended to have a headache, and sending out the door-keeper, he summoned all the physicians in the city by proclamation with beat of drum. And he took aside every single one of them and questioned him privately in the following words: “What patients have you here, and how many, and what medicine have you prescribed for each?” And they thereupon, one by one, answered all the king’s questions. Then one among the physicians, when his turn came to be questioned, said this, “The merchant Mátṛidatta has been out of sorts, O king, and this is the second day, that I have prescribed for him nágabalá.[5] When the king heard that, he sent for the merchant, and said to him—“Tell me, who fetched you the nágabalá?” The merchant said—“My servant, your highness.” When the king got this answer from the merchant, he quickly summoned the servant and said to him—“Give up that treasure belonging to a Bráhman, consisting of a store of dínárs, which you found when you were digging at the foot of a tree for nágabalá.” When the king said this to him, the servant was frightened and confessed immediately, and bringing those dínárs left them there. So the king for his part summoned the Bráhman and gave him, who had been fasting in the meanwhile, his dínárs, lost and found again, like a second soul external to his body.
“Thus that king by his wisdom recovered for the Bráhman his wealth, which had been taken away from the root of the tree, knowing that that simple grew in such spots. So true is it, that intellect always obtains the supremacy, triumphing over valour, indeed in such cases what could courage accomplish? Accordingly, Yogeśvara, you ought to bring it to pass by your wisdom, that some peccadillo be discovered in Kalingasená. And it is true that the gods and Asuras are in love with her. This explains your hearing at night the sound of some being in the air. And if we could only obtain some pretext, calamity would fall upon her, not on us; the king would not marry her, and yet we should not have dealt unrighteously with her.” When the Bráhman-Rákshasa Yogeśvara heard all this from the sagacious Yaugandharáyaṇa, he was delighted and said to him—“Who except the god Vṛihaspati can match thee in policy? This counsel of thine waters with ambrosia the tree of empire. I, even I, will investigate with wisdom and might the proceedings of Kalingasená.” Having said this, Yogeśvara departed thence.
And at this time Kalingasená, while in her palace, was continually afflicted by beholding the king of Vatsa roaming about in his palace and its grounds. Thinking on him, she was inflamed with love, and though she wore a bracelet and necklace of lotus fibres, she never obtained relief thereby, nor from sandal-ointment, or other remedies.
In the meanwhile the king of the Vidyádharas, named Madanavega, who had seen her before, remained wounded by the arrow of ardent love. Though he had performed a vow to obtain her, and had been granted a boon by Śiva, still she was not easy to gain, because she was living in the land of another, and attached to another, so the Vidyádhara prince was wandering about at night in the air over her palace, in order to obtain an opportunity. But, remembering the order of Śiva pleased with his asceticism, he assumed one night by his skill the form of the king of Vatsa. And in his shape he entered her palace, saluted with praises by the door-keepers, who said—“Unable to bear delay, the king has come here without the knowledge of his ministers.” And Kalingasená, on beholding him, rose up bewildered with agitation, though she was, so to speak, warned by her ornaments which jingled out the sounds—“This is not the man.” Then she by degrees gained confidence in him, and Madanavega, wearing the form of the king of Vatsa, made her his wife by the Gándharva rite. At that moment Yogeśvara entered, invisible by his magic, and, beholding the incident, was cast down, supposing that he saw the king of Vatsa before him. He went and told Yaugandharáyaṇa, who, on receiving his report, saw by his skill that the king was in the society of Vásavadattá. So by the order of the prime minister he returned delighted, to observe the shape of that secret paramour of Kalingasená, when asleep. And so he went and beheld that Madanavega asleep in his own form on the bed of the sleeping Kalingasená, a heavenly being, the dustless lotus of whose foot was marked with the umbrella and the banner; and who had lost his power of changing his form, because his science was suspended during sleep. Then Yogeśvara, full of delight, went and told what he had seen in a joyful mood to Yaugandharáyaṇa. He said—“One like me knows nothing, you know everything by the eye of policy; by your counsel this difficult result has been attained for your king. What is the sky without the sun? What is a tank without water? What is a realm without counsel? What is speech without truth?” When Yogeśvara said this, Yaugandharáyaṇa took leave of him, much pleased, and went in the morning to visit the king of Vatsa. He approached him with the usual reverence, and in course of conversation said to the king, who asked him what was to be done about Kalingasená—“She is unchaste, O king, and does not deserve to touch your hand. For she went of her own accord to visit Prasenajit. When she saw that he was old, she was disgusted, and came to visit you out of desire for your beauty, and now she even enjoys at her pleasure the society of another person.” When the king heard this, he said—“How could a lady of birth and rank do such a deed? Or who has power to enter my harem?” When the king said this, the wise Yaugandharáyaṇa answered him, “I will prove it to you by ocular testimony this very night, my sovereign. For the divine Siddhas and other beings of the kind are in love with her. What can a man do against them? And who here can interfere with the movements of gods? So come and see it with your own eyes.” When the minister said this, the king determined to go there with him at night.
Then Yaugandharáyaṇa came to the queen, and said—“To-day, O queen, I have carried out what I promised, that the king should marry no other wife except queen Padmávatí, and thereupon he told her the whole story of Kalingasená. And the queen Vásavadattá congratulated him, bowing low and saying—“This is the fruit which I have reaped from following your instructions.”
Then, at night, when folk were asleep, the king of Vatsa went with Yaugandharáyaṇa to the palace of Kalingasená. And entering unperceived, he beheld Madanavega in his proper form, sleeping by the side of the sleeping Kalingasená. And when the king was minded to slay that audacious one, the Vidyádhara prince was roused by his own magic knowledge, and when awake, he went out, and immediately flew up into the heaven. And then Kalingasená awoke immediately. And seeing the bed empty, she said, “How is this, that the king of Vatsa wakes up before me, and departs, leaving me asleep?” When Yaugandharáyaṇa heard that, he said to the king of Vatsa—“Listen, she has been beguiled by that Vidyádhara wearing your form. He was found out by me by means of my magic power, and now I have exhibited him before your eyes, but you cannot kill him on account of his heavenly might.” After saying this, he and the king approached her, and Kalingasená, for her part, seeing them, stood in a respectful attitude. But when she began to say to the king—“Where, O king, did you go only a moment ago, so as to return with your minister?”—Yaugandharáyaṇa said to her—“Kalingasená, you have been married by some being, who beguiled you by assuming the shape of the king of Vatsa, and not by this lord of mine.”
When Kalingasená heard this, she was bewildered, and as if pierced through the heart by an arrow, she said to the king of Vatsa with tear-streaming eyes,—“Have you forgotten me, O king, after marrying me by the Gándharva rite, as Śakuntalá long ago was forgotten by Dushyanta?”[6] When the king was thus addressed by her, he said with downcast face, “In truth you were not married by me, for I never came here till this moment.” When the king of Vatsa had said this, the minister said to him—“Come along”—and conducted him at will to the palace.
When the king had departed thence with his minister, that lady Kalingasená, sojourning in a foreign country, like a doe that had strayed from the herd, having deserted her relations, with her face robbed of its painting by kissing, as a lotus is robbed of its leaves by cropping, having her braided tresses disordered, even as a bed of lotuses trampled by an elephant has its cluster of black bees dispersed; now that her maidenhood was gone for ever, not knowing what expedient to adopt or what course to pursue, looked up to heaven and spake as follows—“Whoever that was that assumed the shape of the king of Vatsa and married me, let him appear, for he is the husband of my youth.” When invoked in these words, that king of the Vidyádharas descended from heaven, of divine shape, adorned with necklace and bracelet. And when she asked him who he was, he answered her;—“I, fair one, am a prince of the Vidyádharas, named Madanavega. And long ago I beheld you in your father’s house, and by performing penance obtained a boon from Śiva, which conferred on me the attainment of you. So, as you were in love with the king of Vatsa, I assumed his form, and quickly married you by stealth, before your contract with him had been celebrated.” By the nectar of this speech of his, entering her ears, the lotus of her heart was a little revived. Then Madanavega comforted that fair one, and made her recover her composure, and bestowed on her a heap of gold, and when she had conceived in her heart affection for her excellent husband, as being well suited to her, he flew up into the heaven to return again. And Kalingasená, after obtaining permission from Madanavega, consented to dwell patiently where she was, reflecting that the heavenly home, the abode of her husband, could not be approached by a mortal, and that through passion she had left her father’s house.
[1] This is a reproduction of the story of Devasena and Unmádiní in the 3rd book.
[2] Compare the “death-darting eye of cockatrice” in Romeo and Juliet. See also Schmidt’s Shakespeare Dictionary under the word “basilisk.”
[3] Benfey found this story in the Arabic Version of the Panchatantra and in all the translations and reproductions of it. He finds it also in the Mahábhárata, XII (III, 589) śl. 4930 and ff. He expresses his opinion that it formed a portion of the original Panchatantra. See Benfey’s Panchatantra, pp. 544–560, Orient und Occident, Vol. I. p. 383. The account in the Mahábhárata is very prolix.
[4] For nihatya I conjecture nikhanya.
[5] The plant Uraria Lagopodioides (Monier Williams).
[6] For similar instances of forgetting in European stories, see Nos. 13, 14, 54, 55 in the Sicilianische Märchen with Köhler’s notes, and his article in Orient und Occident, Vol. II, p. 103.