Page:Tales from the Indian Epics.djvu/40

34 on hearing her words grew so angry that his lips quivered. "Snake woman," he cried, "you have sorely displeased me. Do you not know that while I sleep the sun has no power to set? Go back therefore to your brother's house and vex me no more." The snake princess strove in vain to soothe the anger of the rishi. But it could not be appeased and, leaving her, he went away to the forest and became once more an anchorite.

The snake princess went sadly back to the palace of her brother Vasuki the snake king. There she bore to her husband a son called Astika. And King Vasuki gave Astika, when he grew to be a youth, the wisest teachers in all India. So that the fame of Astika's virtues and of his learning spread to the ends of the earth.

Now when King Yudhisthira and his brothers and their queen, Draupadi, had left Hastinapura and set out for the Lord Indra's heaven, they had placed on the throne of the Bharatas Parikshit the son of Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna the archer. And Parikshit's fame spread all over India. For he was a wise and mighty prince and for nearly sixty years he ruled justly upon the throne of Hastinapura. One day when he was over sixty years of age he went hunting in the forest. While he hunted, he wounded a stag with an arrow, and as his horse was weary he left it and followed the stag on foot. But the stag fled and he lost all trace of it. Hungry and tired, King Parikshit wandered through the forest until at last he came to the hermitage of the rishi Samika. "O Brahman," said the King, "I am