‘The beggar may rise to royal degree’;
and the Brahmin responded without hesitation—
‘The monarch descend to beggary.’
“The minister caught him at once by the hand, and insisted on hearing his story. No sooner was he made aware of what had been done by the hunchback, than he hastened to the palace, where he found the queen bathed in tears over a favourite parrot, which lay dead on her lap. The old man concerted with her a plan for the destruction of the hunchback and the restoration of the true king; then he secretly introduced the transformed Mukunda into the chamber, and summoned the false king.
“‘O sire,’ said the queen, ‘if you love me restore my pretty parrot to life.’
“‘That is easily effected,’ answered the fool.
“In an instant his body fell rigid, and his soul entered the bird, which sat up, plumed its feathers, and began to chatter. At the same moment the true Mukunda pronounced the magic words, dropped his adopted body, and darted into that which had originally been his. At the sight of the reviving monarch, the queen wrung the parrot’s neck, and thus destroyed the impostor.”
This story is based on the great Buddhist doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and was evidently a very popular illustration of that fundamental dogma, for variations of it are common in most ancient Sanscrit collections. Thus in the Katha Sarit Sagara, a work of Soma Deva, written between A.D. 1113-1125, the story reappears considerably altered, but still told with the design of insisting on the doctrine of transmigration of souls. Soma Deva’s tale is this in brief:—
Vararutschi, Vyâdi, and Indradatta desired to learn the new lessons of Varscha, but could not pay the stipulated fee—a million pieces of gold. They determined to ask King Nanda—a contemporary of Alexander the Great, by the way—to pay it for them, and they visited his capital. They are too late: Nanda is just dead. However, determined to obtain the requisite sum, Indradatta leaves his body in a wood, guarded by his companions, and sends his soul into the dead king. Then Vararutschi goes to him, asks, and receives the gold, whilst Vyâdi sits beside the deserted body.
But the prime minister suspected that the revived master was not quite identical with the deceased master. Indeed, King Nanda now exhibited an intelligence and vigour which had been sadly deficient before. The minister knew that the heir to the throne was but a child, and that he had powerful enemies. He therefore formed the resolution of keeping the false king on the throne till the heir was of age to govern. To effect his purpose, he issued orders that every corpse in the kingdom should be burnt. Amongst the rest was consumed that of Indradatta, and the Brahmin found himself, with horror, obliged to remain in the body of a Sudra, though that Sudra was a king.