Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/238

 was full of Rákshasas as it was of trees, besmirched with the copious smoke of the funeral pyres, and with men hanging from their trunks* which were weighed down and surrounded with nooses, he did not at first see that woman that he had seen before, but he thought of an admirable device for obtaining that bracelet, which was nothing else than the selling of human flesh. † So he pulled down a corpse from the noose by which it was suspended on the tree, and he wandered about in the cemetery, crying aloud— " Human flesh for sale, buy, buy !" And immediately a woman called to him from a distance, saying, " Courageous man, bring the human flesh and come along with me." When he heard that, he advanced following that woman, and beheld at no great distance under a tree a lady of heavenly appearance, surrounded with women, sitting on a throne, glittering with jewelled ornaments, whom he would never have expected to find in such a place, any more than to find a lotus in a desert. And having been led up by that woman, he approached the lady seated as has been described, and said, " Here I am, I sell human flesh, buy, buy !" And then the lady of heavenly appearance said to him, " Courageous hero, for what price will you sell the flesh?" Then the hero, with the corpse hanging over his shoulder and back, said to her, shewing her at the same time that single jewelled anklet which was in his hand, " I will give this flesh to whoever will give me a second anklet like this one; if you have got a second like it, take the flesh." When she heard that, she said to him, " I have a second like it, for this very single anklet was taken by you from me. I am that very woman who was seen by you near the impaled man, but you do not recognise me now, because I have assumed another shape. So what is the use of flesh? If you do what I tell you, I will give you my second anklet, which matches the one in your hand." When she said this to the hero, he consented and said, " I will immediately do whatever you say." Then she told him her whole desire from the beginning : " There is, good sir, a city named Trighanta on a peak of the Himalayas. In it there lived a heroic prince of the Rákshasas named Lambajihva. I am his wife, Vidyuchchhikhá by name, and I can change my form at will. And as fate would have it, that husband of mine, after the birth of my daughter, was slain in battle fighting in front of the king Kapálasphota; then that king being pleased gave me his own city, and I have lived with my daughter in great comfort on its proceeds up to the present time. And that daughter of mine has by this time grown up to fresh womanhood, and I have great anxiety in my mind as to how to obtain for her a brave husband. Then being here on the fourteenth night of the lunar fortnight, and seeing you coming