Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/593

 cemetery, and ate them in front of Mahákála, smearing them with the grease from the lamp burning before him: and be always slept at night on the ground in the court of the same god's temple, pillowing his head on his arm. Now, one night, he saw the images of all the Mothers and of the Yakshas and other divine beings in the temple of Mahákála trembling from the proximity of spells, and this thought arose in his bosom, " Why should I not employ an artful device here to obtain wealth? If it succeeds, well and good; if it does not succeed, wherein am I the worse?" When he had gone through these reflections, he challenged those deities to play, saying to thorn, " Come now, I will have a game with you, and I will act as keeper of the gaming-table, and will fling the dice; and mind, you must always pay up what you lose." When he said this to the deities they remained silent; so Thințhákarála staked some spotted cowries, and flung the dice. For this is the universally accepted rule among gamblers, that, if a gambler does not object to the dice being thrown, he agrees to play.

Then, having won much gold, he said to the deities, " Pay me the money I have won, as you agreed to do." But though the gambler said this to the deities over and over again, they made no answer. Then he flew in a passion and said to them, " If you remain silent, I will adopt with you the same course as is usually adopted with a gambler, who will not pay the money he has lost, but makes himself as stiff as a stone.* I will simply saw through your limbs with a saw as sharp as the points of Yama's teeth, for I have no respect for anything." When he had said this, he ran towards them, saw in hand; and the deities immediately paid him the gold he had won. Next morning he lost it all at play, and in the evening he came back again, and extorted more money from the Mothers in the same way by making them play with him.

He went on doing this every day, and those deities, the Mothers, were in very low spirits about it; then the goddess Chamundá said to them, " Whoever, when invited to gamble, says ' I sit out of this game ' cannot be forced to play; this is the universal convention among gamblers, ye Mother deities. So when be invites you, say this to him, and so baffle him." When Chamundá had said this to the Mothers, they laid her advice up in their minds. And when the gambler came at night and invited them to play with him, all the goddesses said with one accord " We sit out of this game."

When Thințhákarála had been thus repulsed by those goddesses, he invited their sovereign Mahákála himself to play. But that god, thinking that the fellow had taken this opportunity of trying to force him to