Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/105

 him. Then he mounted on the bird, and took the kuttiní with him naked, and transformed as he had directed, and he flew up rapidly with her into the air. While he was in the air, he beheld a lofty stone pillar in front of a temple, with a discus on its summit. So he placed her on the top of the pillar, with the discus as her only support,* and there she hung like a banner to blazon forth his revenge for his ill-usage. He said to her—— "-Remain here a moment while I bless the earth with my approach," and vanished from her sight. Then beholding a number of people in front of the temple, who had come there to spend the night in devout vigils before the festive procession, he called aloud from the air ——"Hear, ye people, this very day there shall fall upon you here the all-destroying goddess of Pestilence, therefore fly to Hari for protection." When they heard this voice from the air, all the inhabitants of Mathurá who were there, being terrified, implored the protection of the god, and remained devoutly muttering prayers to ward off calamity. Lohajangha, for his part, descended from the air, and encouraged them to pray, and after changing that dress of his, came and stood among the people, without being observed. The Kuttiní thought, as she sat upon the top of the pillar,—— "the god has not come as yet, and I have not reached heaven." At last feeling it impossible to remain up there any longer, she cried out in her fear, so that the people below heard; "Alas! I am falling, I am falling." Hearing that, the people in front of the god's temple were beside themselves, fearing that the destroying goddess was falling upon them, even as had been foretold, and said, "O goddess, do not fall, do not fall." So those people of Mathurá, young and old, spent that night in perpetual dread that the destroying goddess would fall upon them, but at last it came to an end; and then beholding that kuttiní upon the pillar in the state described, † the citizens and the king recognized her at once; all the people thereupon forgot their alarm, and burst out laughing, and Rúpiniká herself at last arrived having heard of the occurrence. And when she saw it, she was abashed, and with the help of the people, who were there, she managed to get that mother of hers down from the top of the pillar immediately: then that kuttiní was asked by all the people there, who were filled with curiosity, to tell them the whole story, and she