When the parrot had recited this śloka, it began to reflect, and said again, “What do you wish to know? tell me from what śástra I shall recite.”
Then the king was much astonished, but his minister said—“I suspect, my lord, this is some ṛishi of ancient days become a parrot on account of a curse, but owing to his piety he remembers his former birth, and so recollects what he formerly read.” When the ministers said this to the king, the king said to the parrot—“I feel curiosity, my good parrot, tell me your story, where is your place of birth? How comes it that in your parrot condition you know the śástras? Who are you?” Then the parrot shed tears and slowly spoke: “The story is sad to tell, O king, but listen, I will tell it in obedience to thy command.”
The parrot’s account of his own life as a parrot.
Near the Himálayas, O king, there is a rohiní tree, which resembles the Vedas, in that many birds take refuge in its branches that extend through the heaven, as Bráhmans in the various branches of the sacred tradition.[2] There a cock-parrot used to dwell with his hen, and to that pair I was born, by the influence of my evil works in a former life. And as soon as I was born, the hen-parrot, my mother, died, but my old father put me under his wing, and fostered me tenderly. And he continued to live there, eating what remained over from the fruits brought by the other parrots, and giving some to me.
Once on a time, there came there to hunt a terrible army of Bhillas, making a noise with cows’ horns strongly blown; and the whole of that great wood was like an army fleeing in rout, with terrified antelopes for dust-stained banners, and the bushy tails of the chamarí deer, agitated in fear, resembling chowries, as the host of Pulindas rushed upon it to slay various living creatures. And after the army of Śavaras had spent the day in the hunting-grounds, in the sport of death, they returned with the loads of flesh which they had obtained. But a certain aged Śavara, who had not obtained any flesh, saw the tree in the evening, and being hungry, approached it, and he quickly climbed up it, and kept dragging parrots and other birds from their nests, killing them, and flinging them on the ground. And when I saw him coming near, like the minister of Yama, I slowly crept in fear underneath the wing of my father. And in the meanwhile the ruffian came near our nest, and dragged out my father, and wringing his neck, flung him down on the ground at the foot of the tree. And I fell with my father, and slipping out from underneath his wing, I slowly crept in my fear into the grass and leaves. Then the rascally Bhilla came down, and roasted some of the parrots and ate them, and others he carried off to his own village.
Then my fear was at an end, but I spent a night long from grief, and in the morning, when the flaming eye[3] of the world had mounted high in the heaven, I, being thirsty, went to the bank of a neighbouring lake full of lotuses, tumbling frequently, clinging to the earth with my wings, and there I saw on the sand of the lake a hermit, named Maríchi, who had just bathed, as it were my good works in a former state of existence. He, when he saw me, refreshed me with drops of water flung in my face, and, putting me in the hollow of a leaf, out of pity, carried me to his hermitage. There Pulastya, the head of the hermitage, laughed when he saw me, and being asked by the other hermits, why he laughed, having supernatural insight, he said—“When I beheld this parrot, who is a parrot in consequence of a curse, I laughed out of sorrow, but after I have said my daily prayers, I will tell a story connected with him, which shall cause him to remember his former birth, and the occurrences of his former lives.” After saying this, the hermit Pulastya rose up for his daily prayer, and, after he had performed his daily prayer, being again solicited by the hermits, the great sage told this story concerning me.
The hermit’s story of Somaprabha, Manorathaprabhá, and Makarandiká, wherein it appears who the parrot was in a former birth.
There lived in the city of Ratnákara a king named Jyotishprabha, who ruled the earth with supreme authority, as far as the sea, the mine of jewels. There was born to him, by his queen named Harshavatí, a son, whose birth was due to the favour of Śiva propitiated by severe asceticism. Because the queen saw in a dream the moon entering her mouth, the king gave his son the name of Somaprabha. And the prince gradually grew up with ambrosial qualities, furnishing a feast to the eyes of the subjects.