Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/312

 Vidyádhara prince, by name Madanavega, roaming about at will, came that way through the air. He saw that Lávanyavatí sleeping by the side of her husband, and her robe, that had slipped aside, revealed her exquisitely moulded limbs. His heart was captivated by her beauty; and blinded by love, he immediately swooped down, and taking her up in his arms asleep, flew off with her through the air.

Immediately her husband, the young man Harisvámin, woke up, and not seeing his beloved, he rose up in a state of distraction. He said to himself, " What can this mean? Where has she gone? I wonder if she is angry with me. Or has she hidden herself to find out my real feelings, and is making fun of me?" Distracted by many surmises of this kind, he wandered hither and thither that night, looking for her on the roof, and in the turrets of the palace. He even searched in the palace-garden, and when he could not find her anywhere, being scorched with the fire of grief, he sobbed and lamented, " Alas ! my beloved with face like the moon's orb, fair as the moonlight; did this night grudge your existence, hating your charms that rival hers* ? That very moon, that, vanquished by your beauty, seemed to be in fear, and comforted me with its rays cool as sandal- wood, now that I am bereaved of you, seems to have seen its opportunity, and smites me with them, as if with burning coals, or arrows dipped in poison." While Harisvámin was uttering these laments, the night at last slowly passed away, not so his grief at his bereavement. The next morning the sun dispelled with his rays the deep darkness that covered the world, but could not dispel the dense darkness of despondency that had settled on him. The sound of his bitter lamentations, that seemed to have been reinforced by wailing power bestowed on him by the chakravákas, whose period of separation was at an end with the night, was magnified a hundredfold. The young Bráhman, though his relations tried to comfort him, could not recover his self-command, now that he was bereaved of his beloved, but was all inflamed with the fire of separation. And he went from place to place, exclaiming with tears, " Here she stood, here she bathed, here she adorned herself, and here she amused herself."

But his friends and relations said to him, " She is not dead, so why do you kill yourself? If you remain alive, you will certainly recover her somewhere or other. So adopt a resolute tone, and go in search of your beloved; there is nothing in this world that a resolute man, who exerts himself, cannot obtain." When Harisvámin had been exhorted in these terms by his friends and relations, he managed at last, after some days, to recover his spirits by the aid of hope. And he said to himself, " I will give away all that I have to the Bráhmans, and visit all the holy waters, and wash away all my sins. For if I wipe out my sin, I may perhaps, in the course