Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/402

 Then, the next day, Sundarasena said to the king, " My wounds are healed, and my object is attained, so I will now go hence to my own city; and, please, send off at once to my father a messenger with a letter, to tell the whole story, and announce my arrival."* When the Śavara chief heard this, he sent off a messenger with a letter, and gave him the message which the prince suggested.

And just as the letter-carrier was reaching the city of Alaká, it happened that king Mahásena and his queen, afflicted because they heard no tidings of Sundarasena, were preparing to enter the fire in front of a temple of Śiva, surrounded by all the citizens, who were lamenting their approaching loss. Then the Śavara, who was bearing the letter, beholding king Mahásena, came running up proclaiming who he was, stained with dust, bow in hand, with his hair tied up in a knot behind with a creeper, black himself, and wearing a loin-cincture of vilva-leaves. That letter-carrier of the king of the Bhillas said, " King, you are blessed with good fortune to-day, as your son Sundarasena has come with Mandáravatí, having escaped from the sea; for he has arrived at the court of my master Vindhyaketu, and is on his way to this place with him, and has sent me on before." Having said this, and thus discharged his confidential commission, the letter-carrier of the Bhilla king laid the letter at the monarch's feet. Then all the people there, being delighted, raised a shout of joy; and the letter was read out, and the whole of the wonderful circumstances became known; and king Mahásena recompensed the letter-carrier, and abandoned his grief, and made great rejoicings, and entered his palace with all his retainers. And the next day, being impatient, he set out to meet his son, whose arrival he expected, accompanied by the king of Hansadvípa. And his force of four arms marched along with him, innumerable, so that the earth trembled, dreading insupportable weight. In the meanwhile Sundarasena set out from that village of the Bhillas for his own home, with Mandáravatí. And he was accompanied by his friends Vikramaśakti and Bhímabhuja, whom he found in the prison, and Dŗidhabuddhi too was with him. He himself rode on a horse swift as the wind, by the side of Vindhyaketu, and seemed by the hosts of Pulindas that followed him, to be exhibiting the earth as belonging to that race. And as he was marching along, in a few days he beheld on the road his father coming to meet him, with his retinue and his connections. Then he got down from his horse, and the people beheld him with joy, and he and his friends went up and full at the feet of his father. His father, when he beheld his son looking like the full moon, felt like the sea which surges up with throbbings of joy, and overflows its bounds, and could not contain