Ever thus he sang, and his comrades heard him and wondered greatly. So it came that one evening Jívala spoke to Nala and said: “For whom do you sorrow thus, O Váhuka? I pray you to tell me. Who is the husband of this lady?”
Nala answered him with sad voice and said: “Once there was a peerless lady, and she had a husband of weakly will. And lo! as they wandered in a forest together, he fled from her without cause, and yet he sorrowed greatly. Ever by day and by night is he consumed by his overwhelming grief, and brooding ever, he sings this melancholy song. He is a weary wanderer in the wide world, and his sorrow is without end; it is never still.... His wife wanders all forlorn in the forest. Ah! she deserved not such a fate. Thirsting and anhungered she wanders alone because her lord forsook her and fled; wild beasts are about her, seeking to devour; the wood is full of perils.... It may be that she is not now alive....”
Thus did Nala sorrow in his secret heart over Damayantí during his long sojourn at Ayodhya, while he served the renowned Rajah Rituparna.
Meanwhile King Bhima was causing search to be made for his lost daughter and her royal husband. Abundant rewards were offered to Bráhmans, who went through every kingdom and every city in quest of the missing pair. It chanced that a Brahman, named Sudeva, entered Chedi when a royal holiday was being celebrated, and he beheld Damayantí standing beside the Princess Sunanda and the queen mother at the royal palace.
Sudeva perceived that her loveliness had been dimmed by sorrow, and to himself he said as he gazed upon her: “Ah! the lady with lotus eyes is like to the moon, darkly beautiful; her splendour hath shrunken like the crescent moon veiled in cloud—she who aforetime was beheld in the full moonlight of her glory. Pining for her lost husband, she is like to a darksome night when the moon is swallowed; her sorrow hath stricken her like to a river which has become dry, like to a shrunken pool in which lotus blooms shrivel and fade; she is, indeed, like to withered lotus.... Doth Nala live now without the bride who thus mourns for him?... When, oh when shall Damayantí be restored once again unto her lord as the moon bride is restored unto the peerless moon?[314] ... Methinks I will speak....”
The Brahman then approached Damayantí and said: “I am Sudeva. Thy royal sire and thy mother and thy children are well.... A hundred Brahmans have been sent forth throughout the world to search for thee, O noble lady.”
Damayantí heard him and wept.
The Princess Sunanda spoke to her queen mother, saying: “Lo! our handmaid weeps because that the Brahman hath spoken unto her.... Who she is we shall speedily know now.”
Then the queen mother conducted the holy man to her chambers and spoke to him, saying: “Who is she—this mysterious and noble stranger, O holy man?”