Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/386

 Kanya, said to us, ' Come, why have you allowed yourselves to become so dispirited, being, as you are, men of valour? For it is the part of a brave man to display unbroken firmness in calamity, and freedom from arrogance in success, and never to abandon fortitude. And great men attain the title of great by struggling through great difficulties by the aid of resolution, and accomplishing great things. In illustration of this, listen to this story of Sundarasena, and hear how he endured hardship for the sake of Mandáravatí?' When the hermit Kanva had said this, he began, in the hearing of us and of all the hermits, to tell the following tale."

Story of Sundarasena and Mandáravatí.:—- There is a country named Nishada, that adorns the face of the northern quarter; in it there was of old a city of the name of Alaká. In this city the people were always happy in abundance of all things,* and the only things that never enjoyed repose were the jewel-lamps. In it there lived a king of the name of Mahásena, and not without reason was he so named, for his enemies were all consumed by the wonderful and terrible fire of his valour, which resembled that of the god of war. That king had a prime minister named Gunapálita, who was like a second Śesha, for he was a mine of valour, and could bear up, like that serpent, the weight of the earth. The king, having destroyed his enemies, laid upon him the weight of his kingdom and devoted himself to pleasure; and then he had a son born to him by his queen Śasiprabhá, named Sundarasena. Even when he was a child, he was no child in good qualities, and the goddesses of valour and beauty chose him for their self-elected husband. That prince had five heroic ministers, equal in age and accomplishments, who had grown up with him from their childhood, Chandaprabha, and Bhímabhuja, and Vyághraparákrama, and the heroic Vikramaśakti, and the fifth was Dridhabuddhi, And they were all men of great courage, endowed with strength and wisdom, well-born, and devoted to their master, and they even understood the cries of birds.† And the prince lived with them in his father's house without a suitable wife, being unmarried, though he was grown up. And that heroic Sundarasena and his ministers reflected, " Courage invincible in assault, and wealth won by his own arm, and a wife equal to him in beauty become a hero on this earth. Otherwise, what is the use of this beauty?"

And one day the prince went out of the town to hunt, accompanied by his soldiers, and by those five companions, and as he was going out, a certain famous female mendicant named Kátyáyani, bold from the maturity of her age, who had just returned from a distant foreign country, saw him, and said to herself, when she beheld his superhuman beauty, " Is