Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/502

 When Naraváhanadatta heard this from the science, he exclaimed, "Alas! my father!" and fell senseless on the ground. And when he recovered consciousness, he bewailed his father and mother an<l his father's ministers, in company with his own ministers, who had lost their fathers.

But the chiefs of the Vidyádharas and Dhanavatí admonished him, saying, " How is it, king, that you are beside yourself, though you know the nature of this versatile world that perishes in a moment, and is like the show of a juggler? And how can you lament for your parents that are not to be lamented for, as they have done all they had to do on earth; who have seen you their son sole emperor over all the Vidyádharas?" When he had been thus admonished, he offered water to his parents, and put another question to that science, " Where is my uncle Gopálaka now? What did he do?" Then that science went on to say to the king. " When the king of Vatsa had gone to the mountain from which he meant to throw himself, GopálaKa, having lamented for him and his sister, and considering all things unstable, remained outside the city, and summoning his brother Pálaka from Ujjayiní, made over to him that kingdom of Kauśámbí also. And then, having seen his younger brother established in two kingdoms, he went to the hermitage of Kaśyapa in the ascetic-grove on the Black Mountain,* bent on abandoning the world. And there your uncle Gopálaka now is, clothed with a dress of bark, in the midst of self- mortifying hermits." When Naraváhanadatta heard that, he went in a chariot to the Black Mountain, with his suite, eager to visit that uncle. There he alighted from the sky, surrounded by Vidyádhara princes, and beheld that hermitage of the hermit Kaśyapa. It seemed to gaze on him with many roaming black antelope like rolling eyes, and to welcome him with the songs of its birds. With the lines of smoke ascending into the sky, where pious men were offering the Agnihotra oblations, it seemed to point the way to heaven to the hermits. It was full of many mountain-like huge elephants, and resorted to by troops of monkeys † ; and so seemed like a strange sort of Pátála, above ground, and free from darkness.

In the midst of that grove of ascetics, he beheld his uncle surrounded by hermits, with long matted locks, clothed in the bark of a tree, looking like an incarnation of patience. And Gopálaka, when he saw his sister's son approach, rose up and embraced him, and pressed him to his bosom with tearful eyes. Then they, both of them, lamented their lost dear ones with renewed grief; whom will not the fire of grief torture, when fanned by the blast of a meeting with relations? When even the animals there