Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/101

 swords in their hands. So she went up to him quickly and taking him aside, said—— "My house is beset by a certain poor lover. So Come there yourself to-day, and take such order with him that he shall depart from my house, and do you possess my daughter." "Agreed," said the Rájpút, and entered that house. At that precise moment Rúpiniká was in the temple, and Lohajangha meanwhile was absent somewhere, and suspecting nothing, he returned to the house a moment afterwards. Immediately the retainers of the Rájpút ran upon him, and gave him severe kicks and blows on all his limbs, and then they threw him into a ditch full of all kinds of impurities, and Lohnjangha with difficulty escaped from it. Then Rúpiniká returned to the house, and when she heard what had taken place, she was distracted with grief, so the Rájpút, seeing that, returned as he came.

Lohajangha, after suffering this brutal outrage by the machinations of the kuttiní, set out for some holy place of pilgrimage, in order to leave his life there, now that he was separated from his beloved. As he was going along in the wild country,* with his heart burning with anger against the Kuttiní, and his skin with the heat of the summer, he longed for shade. Not being able to find a tree, he lighted on the body of an elephant, which had been stripped of all its flesh † by jackals making their way into it by the hind-quarters; accordingly Lohajangha being worn out crept into this carcase, which was a mere shell, as only the skin remained, and went to sleep in it, as it was kept cool by the breeze which freely entered. Then suddenly clouds arose from all sides, and began to pour down a pelting shower of rain; that rain made the elephant's skin contract so that no aperture was left, and immediately a copious inundation came that way, and carrying off the elephant's hide swept it into the Ganges; so eventually the inundation bore it into the sea. And there a bird of the race of Garuda saw that hide, and supposing it to be carrion, took it to the other side of the sea; there it tore open the elephant's hide with its claws, and, seeing that there was a man inside it, fled away. But Lohajangha was awaked by the bird's pecking and scratching, and came out through the aperture made by its beak. And finding that he was on the other side of the sea, he was astonished, and looked upon the whole thing as a day-dream; then he saw there to his terror two horrible Rákshasas, and those two for their part contemplated him from a distance with feelings of fear. Remem-