Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/373

 first rays, like a warning hand, to dissuade him from entering that brigand haunted wood. Then he travelled on through it with his wife and daughter, having his feet wounded with sharp points of kuśa-grass, and he reached a village of the Bhillas. It was full of men that robbed their neighbours of life and property, and shunned by the virtuous, like the strong city of Death.

Then beholding the king from a distance with his dress and ornaments, many Śavaras, armed with various weapons, ran to plunder him. When king Dharma saw that, he said to his daughter and wife, " The barbarians will seize on you first, so enter the wood in this direction." When the king said this to them, queen Chandravatí and her daughter Lávanyavatí, in their terror, plunged into the middle of the wood. And the brave king, armed with sword and shield, killed many of the Śavaras, who came towards him, raining arrows. Then the chief summoned the whole village, and falling on the king, who stood there alone, they slashed his shield to pieces and killed him; and then the host of bandits departed with his ornaments. And queen Chandravatí, concealed in a thicket of the wood, saw from a distance her husband slain: so in her bewilderment she fled with her daughter, and they entered another dense forest a long distance off. There they found that the shadows of the trees, afflicted by the heat of midday, had laid themselves at their cool roots, imitating travellers. So, tired and sad, the queen sat down weeping with her daughter, in a spot on the bank of a lotus-lake, under the shade of an aśoka-tree. In the meanwhile a chief, who lived near, came to that forest on horseback, with his son, to hunt. He was named Chandasinha, and when he saw their footsteps imprinted in the dust, he said to his son Sinhaparákrama, " We will follow up these lovely and auspicious tracks, and if we find the ladies to whom they belong, you shall choose whichever you please of them." When Chandasinha said this, his son Sinhaparákrama said to him, " I should like to have for a wife the one that has these small feet, for I know that she will be young and suited to me. But this one with large feet, being older than the other, will just suit you. When Chandasinha heard this speech of his son's, he said to him, " What is this that you say? Your mother has only recently gone to heaven, and now that I have lost so good a wife, how can I desire another?" When Chandasinha's son heard that, he said to him, " Father, do not say so, for the home of a householder is empty without a wife. Moreover, have you not heard the stanza composed by Múladeva? ' Who, that is not a fool, enters that house in which there is no shapely love eagerly awaiting his return, which, though called a house, is really a prison without chains.' So, father, my death will lie at your door, if you do not take as your wife that companion of the lady whom I have chosen."