Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/419

Rh legend in the Bhogakaritra supplies some. A hermit had been rather severely judged by King Bhoga for a misdemeanour, and condemned to ride through the streets of the capital on an ass. To punish the king for this scandal he went into Cashmere till he had acquired the power of making the soul of a man pass into another body. Then he came back and constrained the soul of the king to pass into the body of a parrot while he made his own soul pass into the king's body; then he issued a decree commanding the slaughter of all the parrots in the kingdom. The royal parrot, however, who was the object of the decree, effected his escape and came to the court of Kandrasena, where he became the pet bird of the princess his daughter; to her he revealed the story of his transformation. At her instigation the hermit-king was persuaded to come to Kandrasena's court to sue for her hand, and there, by means of an intrigue of hers he was put to death. Bhoga thus regained his original form and his kingdom.

Abulfazl celebrates his moderation and uprightness, as well as his liberality and the encouragement he gave to men of learning, of whom he had not less than five hundred at one time lodged in his palace. This similarity of pursuits helped so to foster the tendency of which I have already spoken, to confuse the deeds of one hero with another, that one poet at least (Vararuki by name), who flourished under Bhoga, is reckoned among the nine "jewels" of Vikramâditja's court! Kalidasa, who was not very much, if at all later, is also put among the protégés of Bhoga in the Bhogaprabandha. The actual writers of any note belonging to Bhoga's age, whose names and works have come down to us are chiefly Subandhu and Vâna, authors of two poems entitled respectively Vâsavadattâ and Kâdambarî, of which a reprint was issued at Calcutta in 1850. Dandi, who wrote a celebrated drama called Dashakumârakaritra, affording a useful picture of the manners prevailing in Hindustan and the Dekhan in his time; he also left a treatise on the art of poetry, called Kâvjadarshâ. Another poet of this date, named Shankara, has often been confounded with a philosophical writer of the same name in the eighth century. The Harivansha, a mythological poem in continuation of the Mâha Bhârata, also belongs to this reign. Among numerous other works ascribed to it, many of which have not yet been examined into by Europeans, are several treatises of mathematics and astronomy. Bhoga himself is entered in a list of the astronomers of his time, and he was said to be the author of a treatise on medicine, called Vriddha Bhoga, and of one on jurisprudence, called Smritishâstra.

2. Boddhisattva. See p. 342 and p. 365.