Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/323

 the king entrusted him to the care of the merchant, and retired to his palace. There he pretended to have a headache, and sending out the door-keeper, he summoned all the physicians in the city by proclamation with beat of drum. And he took aside every single one of them and questioned him privately in the following words: " What patients have you here, and how many, and what medicine have you prescribed for each?" And they thereupon, one by one, answered all the king's questions. Then one among the physicians, when his turn came to be questioned, said this, " The merchant Mátridatta has been out of sorts, O king, and this is the second day, that I have prescribed for him nágabalá* When the king heard that, he sent for the merchant, and said to him— " Tell me, who fetched you the nágabalá?" The merchant said— " My servant, your highness." When the king got this answer from the merchant, he quickly summoned the servant and said to him— " Give up that treasure belonging to a Bráhman, consisting of a store of dínárs, which you found when you were digging at the foot of a tree for nágabalá" When the king said this to him, the servant was frightened and confessed immediately, and bringing those dínárs left them there. So the king for his part summoned the Bráhman and gave him, who had been fasting in the meanwhile, his dínars, lost and found again, like a second soul external to his body.

" Thus that king by his wisdom recovered for the Bráhman his wealth, which had been taken away from the root of the tree, knowing that that simple grew iu such spots. So true is it, that intellect always obtains the supremacy, triumphing over valour, indeed in such cases what could courage accomplish? Accordingly, Yogeśvara, you ought to bring it to pass by your wisdom, that some peccadillo be discovered in Kalingasená. And it is true that the gods and Asuras are in love with her. This explains your bearing at night the sound of some being in the air. And if we could only obtain some pretext, calamity would fall upon her, not on us; the king would not marry her, and yet we should not have dealt unrighteously with her." When the Bráhman-Rákshasa Yogeśvara heard all this from the sagacious Yaugandharáyana, he was delighted and said to him " Who except the god Vrihaspati can match thee in policy? This counsel of thine waters with ambrosia the tree of empire. I, even I, will investigate with wisdom and might the proceedings of Kalingasená." Having said this, Yogeśvara departed thence.

And at this time Kalingasená, while in her palace, was continually afflicted by beholding the king of Vatsa roaming about in his palace and its grounds. Thinking on him, she was inflamed with love, and though she