Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/323

 Now the root of this protection is counsel, and counsel resides in counsellors. If the counsellor perishes, protection perishes in its root, and virtue is certain to be impaired.* Moreover guilt would be incurred by causing the death of this Bráhman minister and his son, so you must avoid doing that, otherwise there is a great chance of your infringing the law of virtue. Accordingly you must certainly give to the minister's son the maiden committed to your care by the first Bráhman, and if he returns after the lapse of some time, and is angry, steps can then be taken to put matters right."

When the ministers said this to the king, he agreed to give that man, who was palming himself off as a maiden, to the minister's son. And after fixing an auspicious moment, he brought Manahsvámin, in female form, from the palace of the princess; and he said to the king; " If, king, you are determined to give me, whom another committed to your care, to a person other than him for whom I was intended, I must, I suppose, acquiesce; you are a king, and justice and injustice are matters familiar to you. But I consent to the marriage on this condition only, that I am not to be considered as a wife until my husband has spent six months in visiting holy bathing-places, and returns home; if this condition is not agreed to, know that I will bite my own tongue in two, and so commit suicide."

When the young man, disguised in female form, had prescribed this condition, the king informed the minister's son of it, and he was consoled, and accepted the terms; and he quickly went through the ceremony of marriage, and placed in one house Mrigánkavatí his first wife, and his second supposed wife, carefully guarded, and, like a fool, went on a pilgrimage to holy bathing-places, to please the object of his affections.

And Manahsvámin, in female form, dwelt in the same house with Mrigánkavatí, as the partner of her bed and board. And one night, while he was living there in this way, Mrigánkavatí said to him secretly in the bed-chamber, while their attendants were sleeping outside, " My friend, I cannot sleep, tell me some tale." When the young man, disguised in female form, heard this, he told her the story, how in old time a royal sage, named Ida, of the race of the sun, assumed, in consequence of the curse of Gaurí, a female form that fascinated the whole world, and how he and Budha fell in love with one another at first sight, meeting one another in a shrubbery in the grounds of a temple, and were there united, and how Purúravas was the fruit of that union. When the artful creature had told this story, he went on to say, " So by the fiat of a deity or by charms and drugs, a man may sometimes become a woman, and vice versâ, and in this way even great ones do sometimes unite impelled by love."