Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/368

 " When the animal has its limbs properly developed, I know how to endow it with life."

When they had said this to one another, the four brothers went into the forest to find a piece of bone, on which to display their skill. There it happened that they found a piece of a lion's bone, and they took it up without knowing to what animal it belonged. Then the first covered it with the appropriate flesh, and the second in the same way produced on it all the requisite skin and hair, and the third completed the animal by giving it all its appropriate limbs, and it became a lion, and then the fourth endowed it with life. Then it rose up a very terrible lion, furnished with a dense shaggy mane, having a mouth formidable with teeth,* and with hooked claws at the end of its paws. And charging the four authors of its being, it slew them on the spot, and then retired glutted to the forest. So those Bráhmans perished by making the fatal mistake of creating a lion: for who can give joy to his own soul by raising up a noisome beast?

So, if Fate be not propitious, an accomplishment, though painfully acquired, not only does not bring prosperity, but actually brings destruction. For the tree of valour only bears fruit, as a general rule, when the root, being uninjured, † is watered with the water of wisdom, and when it is surrounded with the trench of policy. When the Vetála, sitting on the shoulder of the king, had told this tale on the way, that night, to king Trivikramasena, he went on to say to him, " King, which of these four was guilty in respect of the production of the lion, that slew them all? Tell me quickly, and remember that the old condition is still binding on you." When the king heard the Vetála say this, he said to himself, " This demon wishes me to break silence, and so to escape from me. Never mind, I will go and fetch him again." Having formed this resolution in his heart, he answered that Vetála, " That one among them, who gave life to the lion, is the guilty one. For they produced the flesh, the skin, the hair, and the limbs, by magic power, without knowing what kind of animal they were making: and therefore no guilt attaches to them on account of their ignorance. But the man, who, when he saw that the animal had a lion's shape, gave life to it, in order to display his skill, was guilty of the death of those Bráhmans."

When the mighty Vetála heard this speech of the king's, he again left his shoulder by magic power and went back to his own place, and the king again went in pursuit of him.