Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/203

 Vijayamálin, and ho had a son named Malayamálin. One day Malayamálin, when he was grown up, went with his father to the king's court, and there he saw the daughter of the king Indukésarin, Induyaśas by name. That maiden, like a bewildering creeper of love,* entered the heart of the young merchant, as soon as he saw her. Then he returned home, and remained in a state of pallor, sleepless at night, and during the day cowering with contracted limbs, having taken upon himself the kumuda-vow † And thinking continually of her, he was averse to food and all other things of the kind, and even when questioned by his relations, he gave no more answer than if he had been dumb.

Then, one day, the king's painter, whose name was Mantharaka, an intimate friend of his, said to him in private, when in this state owing to the sorrow of separation: " Friend, why do you remain leaning against the wall like a man in a picture? Like a lifeless image, you neither eat, nor bear, nor see." When his friend the painter asked him this question persistently, the merchant's son at last told him his desire. The painter said to him; " It is not fitting that you, a merchant's son, should fall in love with a princess. Let the swan desire the beautiful face of the lotuses of all ordinary lakes, but what has he to do with the delight of enjoying the lotus of that lake, which is the navel of Vishnu? Still the painter could not prevent him from nursing his passion; so he painted the princess on a piece of canvass, and gave her picture to him to solace his longing, and to enable him to while away the time. And the young merchant spent his time in gazing on, coaxing, and touching, and adorning her picture, and he fancied that it was the real princess Induyaśas, and gradually became absorbed in her, and did all that he did under that belief. ‡ And in course of time he was so engrossed by that fancy, that he seemed to see her, though she was only a painted figure, talking to him and kissing him. Then he was happy, because he had obtained in imagination union with his beloved, and he was contented, because the whole world was for him contained in that piece of painted canvass.

One night, when the moon was rising, he took the picture and went out of his house with it to a garden, to amuse himself with his beloved. And there he put down the picture at the foot of a tree, and went to a distance, to pick flowers for his darling. At that moment he was seen by a hermit, named Vinayajyoti, who came down from heaven out of compassion, to rescue him from his delusion. He by his supernatural power painted in one part of the picture a live black cobra, and stood near invisible. In the meanwhile Malayamálin returned there, after gathering those flowers, and