Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/630

 He quenched the flame of the pyre, king, by throwing ashes on it,* and then my wife rose up from the midst of it uninjured. The kápálika took with him my wife who followed him, drawn by his magic power, and ran off quickly, and I followed him with my bow and arrows. And when he reached a cave on the bank of the Ganges, he put the magic staff down on the ground, and said exultingly to two maidens who were in it, " She, without whom I could not marry you, though I had obtained you, has come into my possession; and so my vow has been successfully accomplished, " † Saying this he shewed them my wife, and at that moment I flung his magic staff into the Ganges; and when he had lost his magic power by the loss of the staff, I reproached him,exclaiming, " Kápálika, as you wish to rob me of my wife, you shall live no longer." Then the scoundrel, not seeing his magic staff, tried to run away; but I drew my bow and killed him with a poisoned arrow. Thus do heretics, who feign the vows of Śiva only for the pleasure of accomplishing nefa- rious ends, fall, though their sin has already sunk them deep enough.

Then I took my wife, and those other two maidens, and I returned home, exciting the astonishment of my relations. Then I asked those two maidens to tell me their history, and they gave me this answer, " We are the daughters respectively of a king and a chief merchant in Benares, and the kápálika carried us off by the same magic process by which he carried off your wife, and thanks to you we have been delivered from the villain without suffering insult." This was their tale; and the next day I took them to Benares, and handed them over to their relations, after telling what had befallen them. ‡

And as I was returning thence, I saw this young merchant, who had lost his wife, and I came here with him. Moreover, I anointed my body with an ointment that I found in the cave of the kápálika; and, observe, perfume still exhales from it, even though it has been washed. " In this sense did I recover my wife arisen from the dead." When the Bráhman had told this story, the king honoured him and the young merchant, and sent them on their way. And then that king Vikramáditya, taking with him Gunavatí, Chandravatí, and Madanasundarí, and having met his own forces, returned to the city of Ujjayiní, and there he married Gunavatí and Chandravatí. Then the king called to mind the figure carved on a pillar that he

For karah the MSS. give ravah. This would mean that the ascetic was beating his drum. The word in No. 1882 might be khah but is no doubt meant for ravah.