The wise Yaugandharáyaṇa, for his part, immediately left the king’s court, went to his own house, and reflected—“Often procrastination serves to avert an inauspicious measure. For long ago, when Indra had fled on account of having caused the death of a Bráhman, and Nahusha obtained the sovereignty over the gods, he fell in love with Śachí,[6] and she was saved by the preceptor of the gods[7], to whom she had fled for refuge. For in order to gain time, he kept saying—‘She will come to you to-day or to-morrow,’—until Nahusha was destroyed by the curse of a Bráhman, uttered with an angry roar, and Indra regained the sovereignty of the gods. In the same way I must keep putting off my master.” Having thus reflected, the minister secretly made an arrangement with the astrologers that they were to fix a distant date.
Then the queen Vásavadattá found out what had taken place, and summoned the prime-minister to her palace. When he entered and bowed before her, the queen said to him, weeping—“Noble sir, you said to me long ago, ‘Queen, as long as I remain where I am, you shall have no other rival but Padmávatí,’ and observe now, this Kalingasená is about to be married here: and she is beautiful, and my husband is attached to her, so you have proved a prophet of falsehood and I am now a dead woman.” When the minister Yaugandharáyaṇa heard this, he said to her—“Be composed, for how could this happen, queen, while I am alive? However, you must not oppose the king in this matter, but must on the contrary take refuge in self-restraint, and shew him all complaisance. The sick man is not induced to place himself in the physician’s hands by disagreeable speeches, but he is by agreeable speeches, if the physician does his work by a conciliatory method. If a man is dragged against the current, he will never escape from the stream of a river, or from a vicious tendency, but if he is carried with the current, he will escape from both. So when the king comes into your presence, receive him with all attentions, without anger, concealing your real feelings. Approve at present of his marrying Kalingasená, saying that his kingdom will be made more powerful by her father also becoming his ally. And if you do this, the king will perceive that you possess in a high degree the virtue of magnanimity, and his love and courtesy towards you will increase, and thinking that Kalingasená is within his reach, he will not be impatient, for the desire of a man for any object increases if he is restrained. And you must teach this lesson to Padmávatí also, O blameless one, and so that king may submit to our putting him off in this matter. And after this, I ween, you will behold my skill in stratagem. For the wise are tested in difficulty, even as heroes are tested in fight. So, queen, do not be despondent.” In these words Yaugandharáyaṇa admonished the queen, and, as she received his counsels with respect, he departed thence.[8] But the king of Vatsa, throughout that day, neither in light nor darkness entered the private apartments of either of the two queens, for his mind was eager for a new well-matched union with Kalingasená, who had approached him in such an ardour of spontaneous choice. And then the queen and the prime-minister and the king and Kalingasená spent the night in wakefulness like that of a great feast, apart in their respective houses, the second couple through impatience for a rare delight, and the first through very profound anxiety.
[1] Cp. Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 240. So Arthur in the Romance of Artus de la Bretagne (Liebrecht’s Dunlop, p. 107) falls in love with a lady he sees in a dream. Liebrecht in his note at the end of the book tells us that this is a common occurrence in Romances, being found in Amadis of Greece, Palmerin of Oliva, the Romans de Sept Sages, the Fabliau of the Chevalier à la Trappe, the Nibelungen Lied, &c., and ridiculed by Chaucer in his Rime of Sir Topas. He also refers to Athenæus, p. 575, and the Hermotimus of Lucian.
[2] The mountain Mandara which served as a churning-stick at the churning of the ocean of milk.
[3] Velátá is evidently corrupt.
[4] This is to be understood literally of Śiva and Párvatí, but metaphorically of Ushá and Aniruddha.
[5] I read evam for eva.
[6] The wife of Indra.
[7] i. e. Bṛihaspati.