Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/317

 as he was now disarmed, the king threw away his own weapon, and grappling with him, flung him on the earth, and captured him alive. And he brought him back as a prisoner to his own capital, with all his wealth. And he gave orders that he should be put to death by impalement next morning. Now, when that robber was being conducted with beat of drum to the place of execution, that merchant's daughhter Ratnavatí saw him from her palace. Though he was wounded, and his body was begrimed with dust, she was distracted with love as soon as she saw him, so she went and said to her father Ratnadatta, " I select as my husband this man here, who is being led off to execution, so ransom him from the king, my father; if you will not, I shall follow him to the other world. When her father heard this he said, " My daughter, what is this that you say? Before you would not accept suitors endowed with all virtues, equal to the god of love. How comes it that you are now in love with an infamous brigand chief?" Though her father used this argument, and others of the same kind with her, she remained fixed in her determination. Then the merchant went quickly to the king, and offered him all his wealth, if he would grant the robber his life. But the king would not make over to him, even for hundreds of crores of gold pieces, that thief who had robbed on such a gigantic scale, and whom he had captured at the risk of his own life. Then the father returned disappointed, and his daughter made up her mind to follow the thief to the other world, though her relations tried to dissuade her; so she bathed, and got into a palanquin, and went to the spot where his execution was taking place, followed by her father and mother and the people, all weeping.

In the meanwhile the robber had been impaled by the executioners, and as his life was ebbing away on the stake, he saw her coming there with her kinsfolk. And when he heard the whole story from the people, he wept for a moment, and then he laughed a little, and then died on the stake. Then the merchant's virtuous daughter had the thief's body taken down from the stake, and she ascended the funeral pyre with it.*

And at that very moment the holy Śiva, who was invisibly present in the cemetery, spake from the air, " Faithful wife, I am pleased with thy devotedness to thy self-chosen husband, so crave a boon of me." When she heard that, she worshipped and prayed the god of gods to grant her the following boon, " Lord, may my father, who has now no sons, have a hundred,