Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/427

Rh hunters, and accompanied them on their cruel errands to the woods. One day they came upon a holy man who had retired from the world to mortify his passions and appetites in the solitude of a forest. Here he was practising religious duties and austerities to obtain deliverance from sin. These graceless youths not only laughed at the holy man, but even threw sand and stones at him. His attention having thus been attracted to earthly things, the merit of his devotions was destroyed. Filled with rage, he uttered on them a curse to the effect that they should be born as pigs, and then be deprived of their mother. The youths, knowing the holiness of the ascetic and the power of his curse, fell at his feet to implore his mercy. His anger was appeased, and he told them that the lord of Madura should nourish them, make them ministers of state, and give them heavenly bliss. And so it happened. The boys died in the woods, and their spirits entered into twelve young pigs; the parent hogs were slain by hunters, and they were left orphans. The god Siva, however, of his boundless compassion, pitying them, gave them nourishment, restored them to human forms, their heads excepted, and endowed them with matchless wis- Rh