‘At the proper age the mother entreated her husband to provide a suitable wife for their son. He said he would if he could gain admission to Patâla, where Vasuki, the Serpent King, reigns over the Nâgas, and might grant such a request.
‘But his wife was so distressed that to divert her thoughts he consented to travel. After some months they arrived at a city in which a Brahman offered his own beautiful daughter as a wife for the serpent.
‘The girl consented to the marriage and performed her duties admirably. After a time her serpent-husband changed one night into a man, intending in the morning to reassume his serpent form: but the girl’s father discovering that the snake body was abandoned, seized the deserted skin and threw it into the fire.
‘The consequence of which was, that his son-in law ever remained in the figure of a man, to the pride of his parents, and the happiness of his wife.’
After hearing this narrative the king no longer hesitated. The mendicant’s cell was set on fire; the mendicant perished in the flames, and the king was as his general desired, released from the thraldom of a cunning ascetic.[[2]]
[2]. From ‘Ancient and Mediæval India.’—Manning.
When Swami was a boy, his youthful imagination was fired by these ancient Hindu stories, but the one which tended most directly in forming his ambition, giving him the desire to become a mind-reader, was the following, taken from the ‘Vetala-Panchavinasati;’ or, ‘Twenty-five Tales told by a Vetâl.’ A Vetâl may be the spirit of a deceased person, or that of a living person who enters the body of another, leaving its own, and taking possession of that of a corpse.
A certain Brahman, named Shantil, gave up the world and lived in the woods as a hermit, or ascetic. He had already become a magician by Yogi-practice. But ordinary magic did not meet his full ambition. He coveted universal superhuman power; and for this he required the co-operation of an able pupil, carefully instructed, who should be qualified to assist in the sacrifice of a specially indicated human being.
Whilst Shantil pursued his ascetic practice, and sat cross-legged, Yogi-fashion, in his forest dwelling, a severe famine occurred in the district of Delhi, or near Hastinapura. The distressed inhabitants dispersed in search of food, and a Brahman, whose wife had died of hunger, wandered with his two sons, who had not yet attained manhood, into what is called a foreign country.
Afar off they perceived a ‘forest surrounded by various trees, loaded with ripe fruits; the symmetry, the neatness, and the admirable order of the trees, and the abundance and diversity of a thousand sorts of fruits,’ proved most captivating to the hungry men.