Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/270

 rity? So the king saw us yesterday from a distance, while we were debating about a place to dwell in, and how we should subsist. And your majesty, seeing us, had us brought and thrown into prison on the suspicion of being thieves, and to-day we have been questioned about our history, and I have just told it; now it is for your highness to dispose of us at pleasure." When one of them had said this, the king Vikramasinha said to those two Bráhmans,— " I am satisfied, do not be afraid, remain in this city, and I will give you abundance of wealth." When the king had said this, he gave them as much to live on as they wished, and they lived happily in his court accompanied by their wives.

" Thus prosperity dwells for men even in questionable deeds, if they are the outcome of great courage, and thus kings, being satisfied, take pleasure in giving to discreet men who are rich in daring. And thus this whole created world with the gods and demons will always reap various fruits, corresponding exactly to their own stock of deeds good or bad, performed in this or in a former birth. So rest assured, queen, that the flame which was seen by you falling from heaven in your dream, and apparently entering your womb, is some creature of divine origin, that owing to some influence of its works has been conceived in you." The pregnant queen Tárádattá, when she heard this from the mouth of her own husband Kalingadatta, was exceedingly delighted.

Then the queen Tárádattá, the consort of king Kalingadatta in Takshasílá, slowly became oppressed with the burden of her unborn child. And she, now that her delivery was near, being pale of countenance, with tremulous eyeballs,* resembled the East in which the pale streak of the young moon is about to rise. And there was soon born from her a daughter excelling all others, like a specimen of the Creator's power to produce all beauty. The lights kept burning to protect the child against evil spirits, blazing with oil, † were eclipsed by her beauty, and darkened, as if through grief that a son of equal beauty had not been born instead. And her father Kalingadatta, when he saw her born, beautiful though she was,