Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/573

 And in course of time lie left his city, distracted with a paroxysm of love, and wandered through the Vindhya forest in a state of bewilderment. There, as he gazed on the eyes of the young does, he remembered the beauty of the eyes of his beloved, and the bushy tails of the chamaris reminded him of the loveliness of her luxuriant hair, and when he marked the gait of the female elephant, he called to mind the languid grace of her gait, so that the fire of his love broke out into a fiercer flame. And wandering about exhausted with thirst and heat, he reached the foot of the Vindhya mountains, and, after drinking the water of a stream, he sat down at the foot of a tree. In the meanwhile a long-maned lion came out of a cavern of the Vindhya hills, uttering a roar which resembled a loud demoniac laugh, and rushed towards him to slay him. At that very moment a certain Vidyádhara descended rapidly from heaven, and cleft that lion in two with a sword-stroke. And that sky-goer, coming near, said to the king, " King Kanakavarsha, how have you come to this region?" When the king heard it, he recovered his memory, and said to him, " How do you know me, who am tossed with the wind of separation?" Then the Vidyádhara said, " I, when in old time I was a religious mendicant, of the name of Bandhumitra, dwelt in your city. Then you helped me in my rites, when I respectfully asked you to do so, and so I obtained the rank of a Vidyádhara, by making a goblin my servant. Thus I recognized you, and being desirous to confer on you a benefits by way of recompense, I have slain this lion which 1 saw on the point of killing you. " And my name has now become Bandhuprabha." When the Vidyádhara said this, the king conceived an affection for him, and said, " Ah ! I remember, and this friendship has been nobly acted up to by you, so tell me when I shall be reunited with my wife and son." When the Vidyádhara Bandhuprabha heard that, he perceived it by his divine knowledge, and said to the king— " By a pilgrimage to the shrine of Durgá, in the Vindhya hills, you will recover your wife and son, so go you to prosperity, and I will return to my own world." When he had said this, he departed, and king Kanakavarsha, having recovered his self-command, went to visit that shrine of Durgá.

As he was going along, a great and furious wild elephant, stretching out its trunk, and shaking its head, charged him in the path. When the king saw that, he fled by a way full of holes, so that the elephant, pursuing him, fell into a chasm and was killed. Then the king, fatigued with toil and exertion, slowly going along, reached a great lake full of lotuses with straight upstanding stalks. There the king bathed, drank the water of the lake, and ate the fibres of the lotuses, and lying tired at the foot of a tree, was for a moment overpowered by sleep. And some Śavaras, returning that way from hunting, saw that king with auspicious marks lying