Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/168

Rh “I have nothing more to say than that I wish to go to Madura to seek my fortune there,” said Kovilan.

“It will be no easy task for this delicate lady,” said the nun, pointing to “Kannaki to walk over rough roads and through wild woods, the long distance you have to go. I beseech you to desist from this adventure: but you seem bent on going to Madura. I too have been for some time past wishing to visit Madura, and to learn the doctrines of Argha as taught by the wise and learned men of that city. I shall therefore accompany you: and we shall start together.”

“Reverend nun!” said Kovilan thankfully, “if thou art pleased to go with us, I need not feel any anxiety for the safety of my wife.”

The nun dwelt on the dangers and difficulties of the road to Madura, and warned Kovilan specially to be on his guard against causing pain or death to living creatures, however small or insignificant, as it was a sin denounced as heinous by the Nigranthas. Praying to Argha for a safe journey, she slung her ahns-bowl on her shoulder, and taking a bundle of peacock feathers in her hand, she too started on the journey. By short marches they travelled through a fertile country where fields covered with waving corn, luxuriant plantations of the sugarcane, and green woods with hamlets nestling in their shade met their eyes on every side. They forgot the fatigue of their journey, when they heard the roar of floods rushing through sluices and locks into the channels branching from the Kaviri, the joyous chorus of women working in the bids, and the merry songs and shouts of men driving the oxen yoked to their ploughs, or urging the buffaloes which were treading the sheafs of corn reaped from the fields. After travelling for many days they arrived at an island in the middle of the Kaviri, where in a garden which was full of sweet-scented flowers, they met a Nigrantha monk, at whose feet they fell and prayed for his blessing. The sage, who could read by the light of his serene mind the past and future lives of those who stood before him, addressed the nun in the following manner: “Mark my words, thou pious nun! No one can escape the effects of his good or evil deeds. Even like the seeds which are sown and yield a harvest