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 one snake every day to this shore of the southern sea for your meal. But you must by no means enter Pátála, for what advantage will you gain by destroying the snakes at one blow?' When the king of the snakes said this, the mighty Garuda saw that the proposal was to his advantage, and agreed to it. And from that time forth, the king of birds eats every day, on the shore of the sea, a snake sent by Vásuki. So these are heaps of bones of snakes devoured by Garuda, that have gradually accumulated in course of time, and come to look like the peak of a mountain." When Jímutaváhana, that treasure-house of courage and compassion, had heard, inly grieving, this story from the mouth of Mitrávasu, he thus answered him, " One cannot help grieving for king Vásuki, who, like a coward, offers up every day his subjects to their enemy with his own hand. As he has a thousand faces and a thousand mouths, why could he not say with one mouth to Garuda, ' Eat me first?' And how could he be so cowardly as to ask Garuda to destroy his race, and so heartless as to be able to listen continually unmoved to the lamentation of the Nága women?* And to think that Garuda, though the son of Kaśyapa and a hero, and though sanctified by being the bearer of Krishna, should do such an evil deed ! Alas the depths of delusion !" When the noble-hearted one had said this, he formed this wish in his heart, " May I obtain the one essential object in this world by the sacrifice of the unsubstantial body ! May I be so fortunate as to save the life of one friendless terrified Nága by offering myself to Garuda !"

While Jímútaváhana was going through these reflections, a doorkeeper came from Mitrávasu's father to summon them, and Jímútaváhana sent Mitrávasu home, saying to him, " Go you on first, I will follow." And after he had gone, the compassionate man roamed about alone, intent on effecting the object he had in view, and he heard afar off a piteous sound of weeping. And he went on, and saw near a lofty rocky slab a young man of handsome appearance plunged in grief: an officer of some monarch seemed to have just brought him and left him there, and the young man was trying to induce by loving persuasions † an old woman, who was weeping there, to return. And while Jímútaváhana was listening there in secret, melted with pity, eager to know who he could be, the old woman, overwhelmed with the weight of her grief, began to look again and again at the young man, and to lament his hard lot in the following words, " Alas Śankhachúda, you that were obtained by me by means of a hundred pangs! Alas, virtuous one ! Alas ! son, the only scion of our family, where shall I behold you again? Darling, when this moon of your face is with-