Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/190

 gleamed like a lake of white lotuses tinged red with the rising sun. And occasionally, accompanied by huntsmen, clad in a vest dark given as the pulása tree, he ranged, bow and arrows in hand, the forest full of wild beasts, which was of the same colour as himself. He slew with arrows herds of wild boars besmeared with mud, as the sun disperses with its dense rays the masses of darkness; when he ran towards them, the antelopes fleeing in terror, seemed like the sidelong glances of the quarters previously conquered* by him.

And when he slew the buffaloes, the ground, red with blood, looked like a bed of red lotuses, come to thank him humbly for delivering it from the goring of their horns. When the lions too were transfixed by his javelins falling in their open mouths, and their lives issued from them with a suppressed roar, he was delighted. In that wood he employed dogs in the ravines, and nets in the glades; this was the method of his pursuit of the chase in which he relied only upon his own resources. "While he was thus engaged in his pleasant enjoyments, one day the hermit Nárada came to him as he was in the hall of audience, diffusing a halo with the radiance of his body, like the sun, the orb of heaven, descending therefrom out of love for the Solar dynasty. The king welcomed him, inclining before him again and again, and the sage stood a moment as if pleased, and said to that king, " Listen, king, I will tell you a story in few words; you had an ancestor once, a king of the name of Pándu; he like you had two noble wives ; one wife of the mighty prince was named Kuntí and the other Mádrí That Pándu conquered this sea-engirdled earth, and was very prosperous, and being addicted to the vice of hunting he went one day to the forest. There he let fly an arrow and slew a hermit of the name of Arindama, who was sporting with his wife in the form of a deer.† That hermit abandoned that deer-form, and with his breath struggling in his throat cursed that Pándu, who in his despair had flung away his bow; ' Since I have been slain while sporting at will by thee, inconsiderate one, thou also shalt die in the embraces of thy wife.' Having been thus cursed, Pándu through fear of its effect, abandoned the desire of enjoyment, and accompanied by his wives lived in a tranquil grove of ascetic quietism. While he was there, one day impelled by that curse, he suddenly approached his beloved Mádrí, and died. So you may rest assured that the occupation called hunting is a madness of kings, for other kings have been done to death by it, even as the various deer they have slain. For how can