Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/131

 After Gomukha had told this story, he went on to tell that of Hiranyáksha.

Story of Hiranyáksha and Mrigánkalekhá.:— There is in the lap of the Himálayas a country called Kaśmíra, which is the very crest-jewel of the earth, the home of sciences and virtue. In it there was a town, named Hiranyapura, and there reigned in it a king, named Kanukáksha. And there was born to that king, owing to his having propitiated Śiva, a son, named Hiranyáksha, by his wife Ratnaprabhá. The prince was one day playing at ball, and he purposely managed to strike with the ball a female ascetic who came that way. That female ascetic possessing supernatural powers, who had overcome the passion of anger, laughed and said to Hiranyáksha, without altering the expression of her face,* ' If your youth and other qualities make you so insolent, what will you become if you obtain Mrigánkalekhá for a wife." † "When the prince heard that, he propitiated the female ascetic and said to her; " Who is this Mrigánka- " lekhá? tell me, reverend madam." Then she said to him, " There is a glorious king of the Vidyádharas on the Himalayas, named Śaśitejas. He has a beautiful daughter, named Mrigánkalekhá, whose loveliness keeps the princes of the Vidyádharas awake at night. And she will be a fitting wife for you, and you will be a suitable husband for her." When the female ascetic, who possessed supernatural power, said this to Hiranyáksha, he replied, " Tell me, reverend mother, how she is to be obtained." Thereupon she said, " I will go and find out how she is affected towards you, by talking about you. And then I will come and take you there. And you will find me to-morrow in the temple of the god here, named Amareśa, for I come here every day to worship him." After the female ascetic had said this, she went through the air by her supernatural power to the Himálayas, to visit that Mrigánkalekhá. Then she praised to her so artfully the good qualities of Hiranyáksha, that the celestial maiden became very much in love with him, and said to her, " If, reverend mother, I cannot manage to obtain a husband of this kind, of what use to me is this my purposeless life?" So the emotion of love was produced in Mrigánkalekhá, and she spent the day in talking about him, and passed the night with that female ascetic. In the meanwhile Hiranyáksha spent the day in thinking of her, and with difficulty slept at night, but towards the end of the night Párvatí said to him in a dream, " Thou art a Vidyádhara, become a mortal by the curse