Page:Stories of India's Gods & Heroes.djvu/37

Rh endured as it began, might in any case be somewhat doubted; while, if the following tale be no less true than what has gone before, it is plain that concord between two such rivals may well be short-lived.

In the days after Viswamitra had gained his title to the rank of Brahman, there lived an exalted monarch named Harischandra, himself a Rajarshi, as Viswamitra also once had been. This Harischandra was a ruler of the highest parts, and in his realm men loved virtue more than evil, and sickness and calamity visited them but rarely.

It chanced on a day that King Harischandra hunted in the forest; and as he chased a deer, he heard the oft-repeated cry, "O save us!", as of women in distress. These voices proceeded though the king could not know this from the embodied forms of certain Sciences, which the mighty Viswamitra was bringing under his control; and they, never having been so enslaved before, cried out for deliverance.

Now, had King Harischandra acted in his own natural spirit of wisdom and self-control, he would doubtless so have proceeded in the matter that no evil came of it. But by ill chance it happened that there was present a malignant being, the Spirit of Opposition, who goes to and fro in the world, seeking to hinder all that makes for progress; and he, beholding Viswamitra obtaining the mastery over new and mighty sciences, was casting about in his mind how he might stay the sage in his endeavour, yet saw not any means to that end. "For," thought he,