One day, having mounted on horse-back, while he was on the journey going for the marriage contract some young birds having been trampled on by the horse, the hen in this way scolded the Prince, that is, “As it is insufficient that this one is going to take his mother [in marriage], he killed my few young ones.” [Thus] she scolded him. Because during this day there was [this] unlucky omen, having turned back and come, he went on the following day.
When going on that [second] day, a young goat having been trampled on by the horse the female goat also scolded him: “As it is insufficient that he is going to take this one’s mother [in marriage], he killed our young ones.”
When going on the third day also, just as before there was the unlucky omen.
This Prince in this way sought a marriage from the girls’ society itself, because he being a foundling[6] no one gives a [daughter in] marriage on that account. Before this, one day while at the playground, when the other boys said, “He is base-born,” he having asked the King who reared him where his two parents were, had ascertained that having brought him from the midst of the forest he reared him.
Well then, on the third day, also, there having been the unlucky omen, not heeding it and having gone for the contract, not knowing even a little about his mother, from her bearing him up to the time when she came to the girls’ society he asked about the principal occurrences [of her life. Hearing her account of her abandonment of her child], he said, “It was I indeed who was met with in the midst of the forest in such and such a district; because of it this is indeed my mother.”
Ascertaining it, and having gone spreading the news, and seeking out even his father and having returned, he was also appointed to the sovereignty in succession to the King his relative, or who was his mother’s father; and having married Western Province. See the first note after No. 81, vol. ii. In The Story of Madana Kāma Rāja (Pandit Naṭēśa Sāstrī), p. 50, a Prince who had been adopted by a King of Madura, whom he had succeeded on the throne, saw, at the house occupied by dancing-girls, his own mother, from whom he had been separated since his birth, and who had been banished,—and took a fancy for her. When he was about to visit the house in the evening he trod on the tail of a calf and crushed it. In reply to the calf’s complaint, the cow exclaimed that such an act might well not be considered a dishonour by one who was about to visit his own mother. The young King, who understood the language of animals, retraced his steps, prosecuted inquiries, learnt from the Goddess Kālī the story of his birth, his abandonment, and protection by her, and the history of his mother. He brought his mother to the palace, and thanks to Kālī’s advice recovered his father, who had been spirited away by the Sapta-kanyās or Seven Divine Maids.