Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/302

 Prasenajit." When Somaprabhá made this proposal to Kalingasená, she consented, and immediately ascended with her the magic chariot prepared by her, and setting out through the air with her treasures and her retinue, she went off unknown to her parents. For women impelled by love regard neither height nor depth in front of them, as a horse urged on by his rider does not fear the keenest sword-edge. First she came to SVavasti, and beheld from a distance the king Prasenajit white with age, who had gone out to hunt, distinguished by a chouri frequently waved, which seemed at a distance to repel her as if saying— " Leave this old man." And Somaprabhá pointed him out with a scornful laugh, saying— " Look ! this is the man to whom your father wishes to give you." Then she said to Somaprabhá— " Old age has chosen him for her own, what other female will choose him?" " So take me away from here quickly, my friend, to the king of Vatsa." Immediately Kalingasená went with her to the city of Kauśámbí through the air. Then she beheld from a distance with eagerness that king of Vatsa, pointed out by her friend in a garden, as the female partridge beholds the nectar-rayed moon. With dilated eye, and hand placed on the heart, she seemed to say " He has entered my soul by this path." Then she exclaimed, " Friend, procure me a meeting here with the king of Vatsa this very day; for having seen him I am not able to wait a moment." But when she said this, her friend Somaprabhá answered her— " I have seen today an unfavourable omen, so remain, my friend, this day quiet and unobserved in this garden, do not, my friend, send go-betweens backwards and forwards. To-morrow I will come and devise some expedient for your meeting: at present, O thou whose home is in my heart, I desire to return to the home of my husband." Having said this, Somaprabhá departed thence alter leaving her there; and the king of Vatsa, leaving the garden, entered his palace. Then Kalingasená, remaining there, sent her chamberlain, giving him her message explicitly, to the king of Vatsa; and this she did, though previously forbidden by her friend, who understood omens. Love, when recently enthroned in the breasts of young women, is impatient of all restraint. And the chamberlain went and announced himself by the mouth of the warder, and immediately entering, thus addressed the king of Vatsa— "O king, the daughter of Kalingadatta the king who rules over Takshaśilá, Kalingasená by name, having heard that you are most handsome, has come here to choose you for a husband, abandoning her relatives, having accomplished the journey in a magic car that travels through the air, together with her attendants; and she has been conducted here by her confidante named Somaprabhá, who travels invisible, the daughter of the Asura Maa, the wife of Nadakúvara. I have been sent by her to inform you; do you receive her; let there be union of you two