Note.
Oesterley remarks that the substance of this story is told, in the eleventh chapter of the Vikra macharitam, of king Vikramáditya. A Rákshasa carried off so many persons from the city of Pala that the inhabitants agreed to give him one human being every day. The king takes the place of one of these victims, and the Rákshasa is so much affected by it, that he promises not to demand any more victims. A similar contest in generosity is found in the 2nd Tale of the Siddhi-kür, Jülg, p. 60, but the end of the story is quite different. (Oesterley’s Baitál Pachísí, pp. 205–207.) The story in the Siddhi-kür is probably the 5th Tale in Sagas from the Far East; “How the Serpent-gods were propitiated.”
[1] See Chapter XXII for another version of this story. It is found in the Bodhisattvávadána-kalpalatá: see Dr. R. L. Mitra’s Buddhist Literature of Nepal, p. 77.
[2] The MS. in the Sanskrit College reads śúrásandrishṭapṛishṭhaś.
[3] I adopt the reading of the Sanskrit College MS. adhṛiśya for adhṛishya, invincible, instead of adṛiśya invisible.
[4] i. e., Párvatí or Durgá.
[5] See Vol. I, p. 48, and Baring Gould’s remarks in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Second Series, “The piper of Hamelin.”
[6] Here there is an insipid pun about the army of the Páṇḍavas penetrating by the help of Arjuna the host of Karṇa. There seems to be an allusion to Kṛishṇa also. For vivikshatím the Sanskrit College MS. reads vimathnatím.