CHAPTER CVI.
The Talisman of the king’s Marriage with a
Chandála Maiden.
(An Allegory of Human Depravity).
Argument. The king borne on horse-back to the habitation of a huntsman and was there married to his maiden daughter. (This adventure resembles that of Tajul Maluk in Gule Bákavli.)
The king related:—This land of mine abounding in forests and rivulets, and appearing as the miniature of this orb of the earth. Literally:—as the younger twin sister of the earth:—
2. This land appearing as the paradise of Indra, of which I am the king, and where I am now sitting in my court-hall, amidst my courtiers and all these citizens.
3. There appeared here yonder sorcerer from a distant country, like a demon rising from the infernal region on the surface of the ground.
4. He turned round his magic-wand emitting its radiance around, as the tempest rends and scatters the rainbow of Indra in fragments in the air.
5. I was looking intently at the whirling wand, and the horse standing before me, and then mounted on the back of the steed in the dizziness of my mind.
6. I sat on the back of this unmoving horse and seemed to ride on a fleet steed, with the swiftness of the Pushkara and Ávartaka clouds, riding over the tops of immovable rocks.
7. I then went to a chase in full speed, a pass over an ownerless desert, howling as the surges of the boundless ocean.
8. I was borne afterwards with the horse in the air, as if we were wafted by the winds; and dashed onward like common people, who are carried afar by the current of the insatiable desires of their minds.