[6] The story is here taken up from page 232.
[7] The Sanskrit College MS. reads sa kṛitártham̱.
[8] So in Melusine, p. 447, the hero of the tale “La Montagne Noire” rides on the back of a crow, to whom he has to give flesh, as often as he says “couac”. At last he has to give him flesh from his own thighs. The wounds are healed instantaneously by means of a “fiole de graisse” which he carries with him. See No. 61 in Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen with Dr. Köhler’s notes.
[9] The Sanskrit College MS. reads kopita for mánada i. e., “Since I was separated from you by the curse of the enraged Nága.”
Chapter C.
Honour to the vanquisher of obstacles,[1] round whose knees, when he is dancing at night, there winds a garland of stars, which appears as if it had fallen from the globes on his forehead!
Then, the story being ended, the delighted Mṛigánkadatta rose up from the middle of the path, and set out again for Ujjayiní for which he had long ago started in order to find Śaśánkavatí, with a party of eight, including himself, having recovered Vikramakeśarin, accompanied by Guṇákara, and Vimalabuddhi, and Vichitrakatha, and Bhímaparákrama, and Prachaṇḍaśakti, and the Bráhman Śrutadhi, and he kept looking out for those of his companions separated from him by the curse of the Nága, whom he had not yet recovered.
And in course of time, he reached a treeless desert, all the water in which had been dried up by the heat, and which was full of sand heated by the fierce blaze of the sun. And as the prince was traversing it, he said to his ministers, “Observe how long, terrible, and difficult to cross is this great desert; for it has in it no refuge, it is pathless and abandoned by men; and the blaze of its fire of grief seems to ascend in these sandy mirages; its rough and dishevelled locks are represented by the dry rustling blades of grass; and its thorns make it appear to have its hair standing on end through fear of the lions, tigers, and other noisome beasts; and it laments in the cries of its deer exhausted by the heat and longing for water. So we must cross this terrible desert as quickly as we can.”
When Mṛigánkadatta had said this, he quickly crossed that desert with his ministers, who were afflicted with hunger and thirst. And he beheld in front of him a great lake filled with pellucid and cold water, looking like streams that had flowed down from the moon after it had been melted with the heat of the sun. It was so broad that it filled the whole horizon, and it looked like a jewel-mirror made by the Fortune of the three worlds, in order to behold in it the reflection of herself. That lake resembled the Mahábhárata, for in it the Dhártaráshṭras[2] were making a disturbance, and many Arjuna trees were reflected;[3] and it was refreshing and sweet to the taste; it was like the churned sea of doom, for its precious fluid was drunk by the blue-necked jays that assembled near it,[4] and Vishṇu might have resorted to it to find the goddess of Beauty:[5] it resembled an earthly Pátála, for its profound cool depths were never reached by the rays of the sun, and it was an unfailing receptacle of lotuses.[6]