Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/296

 along, the Vetála said from the top of his shoulder, " You are weary, king, so listen to this tale that is capable of dispelling weariness."

Story of Madanasená and her rash promise.:— There was an excellent king of the name of Vírabáhu, who imposed his orders on the heads of all kings: he had a splendid city named Anangapura, and in it there lived a rich merchant, named Arthadatta; that merchant prince had for elder child a son named Dhanadatta, and his younger child was a pearl of maidens, named Madanasená.

One day, as she was playing with her companions in her own garden, a young merchant, named Dharmadatta, a friend of her brother's, saw her. When he saw that maiden, who with the full streams of her beauty, her breasts like pitchers half-revealed, and three wrinkles like waves, resembled a lake for the elephant of youth to plunge in in sport, he was at once robbed of his senses by the arrows of love, that fell upon him in showers. He thought to himself, " Alas, this maiden, illuminated with this excessive beauty, has been framed by Mára, as a keen arrow to cleave asunder my heart." While, engaged in such reflections, he watched her long, the day passed away for him, as if he were a chakraváka. Then Madanasená entered her house, and grief at no longer beholding her entered the breast of Dharmadatta. And the sun sank red into the western main, as if inflamed with the fire of grief at seeing her no more. And the moon, that was surpassed by the lotus of her countenance, knowing that that fair-faced one had gone in for the night, slowly mounted upward.

In the meanwhile Dharmadatta went home, and thinking upon that fair one, he remained tossing to and fro on his bed, smitten by the rays of the moon. And though his friends and relations eagerly questioned him, he gave them no answer, being bewildered by the demon of love. And in the course of the night he at length fell asleep, though with difficulty, and still he seemed to behold and court that loved one in a dream; to such lengths did his longing carry him. And in the morning he woke up, and went and saw her once more in that very garden, alone and in privacy, waiting for her attendant. So he went up to her, longing to embrace her, and falling at her feet, he tried to coax her with words tender from affection. But she said to him with great earnestness, " I am a maiden, betrothed to another, I cannot now be yours, for my father has bestowed me on the merchant Samudradatta, and I am to be married in a few days. So depart quietly, let not any one see you; it might cause mischief." But Dharmadatta said to her, " Happen what may, I cannot live without you." When the merchant's daughter heard this, she was afraid that he the Volsunga-Saga, in Hagen's Helden-Sagen Vol. III, p. 33, and Murray's Ancient Mythology, p. 43. So Hanumán, in the Rámáyana, brings medicinal herbs from the Himálaya.