Chapter CXXIII.
Then, once on a time, in the course of conversation, one of Vikramáditya’s queens, called Kalingasená, said to her rival queens, “What the king did for the sake of Malayavatí was not wonderful, for this king Vishamaśíla has ever been famous on the earth for such like acts. Was not I swooped down on by him and married by force, after he had seen a carved likeness of me and been overcome by love? On this account the kárpaṭika[1] Devasena told me a story: that story I will proceed to tell you; listen.”
“I was very much vexed, and exclaimed ‘How can the king be said to have married me lawfully?’ Then the kárpaṭika said to me, ‘Do not be angry, queen, for the king married you in eager haste out of a violent passion for you; hear the whole story from the beginning.’”
Story of Kalingasená’s marriage
Once on a time, when I was serving your husband as a kárpaṭika, I saw a great boar far away in the wood. Its mouth was formidable with tusks, its colour was black as a Tamála tree, it looked like an incarnation of the black fortnight devouring the digits of the moon. And I came, queen, and informed the king of it, describing it to him as I have done to you. And the king went out to hunt, attracted by his love for the sport. And when he reached the wood, and was dealing death among the tigers and deer, he saw in the distance that boar of which I had informed him. And when he saw that wonderful boar, he came to the conclusion that some being had assumed that form with an object, and he ascended his horse called Ratnákara, the progeny of Ucchaiḥśravas.
For every day at noon, the sun waits a brief space in the sky, and then his charioteer the dawn lets the horses loose, that they may bathe and feed: and one day Uchchhaiḥśravas, having been unyoked from the chariot of the sun, approached a mare of the king’s, that he saw in the forest, and begot that horse.[2]
So the king mounted that swift horse, and quickly pursued that boar, that fled to a very remote[3] part of the forest. Then that boar escaped somewhere from his view, being swifter even than that horse that had Uchchhaiḥśravas for a sire. Then the king, not having caught him, and seeing that I alone had followed him, while he had left the rest of his suite far behind, asked me this question, “Do you know how much ground we have traversed to get to this place?” When I heard that, queen, I made the king this answer, “My lord, we have come three hundred yojanas.” Then the king being astonished said, “Then how have you managed to come so far on foot?” When he asked me this question, I answered, “King, I have an ointment for the feet; hear the way in which I acquired it.”