[19] No. 1882 and the Sanskrit College MS. give tarhi for tvam̱ hi and priyam̱ for priyaḥ. No 3003 agrees with the above MSS. in the first point and in the second with Brockhaus.
[20] I read Páṭaliputrakát.
Chapter CXXIV.
Then King Vikramáditya put this question to the friend of the young merchant, who came with him, “You said that you recovered your wife alive after she was dead; how could that be? Tell us, good sir, the whole story at length.” When the king said this to the friend of the young merchant, the latter answered, “Listen, king, if you have any curiosity about it; I proceed to tell the story.”
Story of Chandrasvámin who recovered his wife alive after her death.
I am a young Bráhman of the name of Chandrasvámin, living on that magnificent grant to Bráhmans, called Brahmasthala, and I have a beautiful wife in my house. One day I had gone to the village for some object, by my father’s orders, and a kápálika, who had come to beg, cast eyes on that wife of mine. She caught a fever from the moment he looked at her, and in the evening she died. Then my relations took her, and put her on the pyre during the night. And when the pyre was in full blaze, I returned there from the village; and I heard what had happened from my family who wept before me.
Then I went near the pyre, and the kápálika came there with the magic staff dancing[1] on his shoulder, and the booming drum in his hand. He quenched the flume of the pyre, king, by throwing ashes on it,[2] and then my wife rose up from the midst of it uninjured. The kápálika took with him my wife who followed him, drawn by his magic power, and ran off quickly, and I followed him with my bow and arrows.
And when he reached a cave on the bank of the Ganges, he put the magic staff down on the ground, and said exultingly to two maidens who were in it, “She, without whom I could not marry you, though I had obtained you, has come into my possession; and so my vow has been successfully accomplished,”[3] Saying this he shewed them my wife, and at that moment I flung his magic staff into the Ganges; and when he had lost his magic power by the loss of the staff, I reproached him, exclaiming, “Kápálika, as you wish to rob me of my wife, you shall live no longer.” Then the scoundrel, not seeing his magic staff, tried to run away; but I drew my bow and killed him with a poisoned arrow. Thus do heretics, who feign the vows of Śiva only for the pleasure of accomplishing nefarious ends, fall, though their sin has already sunk them deep enough.