Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/614

 him, " Chief, explain, I pray you, this that puzzles me. How comes it, that you are a young man, whereas these children of yours are old?" When the king had said this to the Śavara chief, he answered him, " This king, is a strange story; listen if you feel any curiosity about it." Story of the grateful Monkey* :— I was long ago a Bráhman named Chandrasvámin, and I lived in the city of Máyápur. One day I went by order of my father to the forest to fetch wood. There a monkey stood barring my way, but without hurting me, looking at me with an eye of grief, pointing out to me another path. I said to myself, " This monkey does not bite me, so I had better go along the path which he points out, and see what his object is. There-upon I set out with him along that path, and the monkey kept going along in front of me, and turning round to look at me. And after he had gone some distance, he climbed up a jambu-tree, and I looked at the upper part of the tree, which was covered with a dense network of creepers: and I saw a female monkey there with her body fettered by a mass of creepers twisted round her, and I understood that it was on this account that the monkey had brought me there. Then I climbed up the tree, and cut with my axe the creepers † that had twisted round and entangled her, and set that female monkey at liberty.

And when I got down from the tree, the male and female monkey came down also and embraced my feet.- And the male monkey left that female clinging to my feet for a moment, and went and fetched a heavenly fruit, and gave it to me. I took it and returned homo after I had got my fuel, and there I and my wife ate that splendid fruit together, and as soon as we had eaten it, we ceased to be liable to old age and disease. ‡

Then there arose in that country of ours the scourge of famine. And afflicted by that calamity the people of that land fled in all directions.