Katha Sarit Sagar Chapter VI

 CHAPTER VI. 

       Then that Malyavan wandering about in the wood in human form, passing under the name of Gunadhya, having served the king Satavahana, and having, in accordance with a vow, abandoned in his presence the use of Sanskrit and two other languages, with sorrowful mind came to pay a visit to Durga, the dweller in the Vindhya hills ; and by her orders he went and beheld Kanabhuti. Then he remembered his origin and suddenly, as it were, awoke from sleep ; and making use of the Paisacha language, which was different from the three languages he had sworn to forsake, he said to Kanabhuti, after telling him his own name ; " Quickly tell me that tale which you heard from Pushpadanta, in order that you and I together, my friend, may escape from our curse." Hearing that, Kanabhuti bowed before him, and said to him in joyful mood, " I will tell you the story, but great curiosity possesses me, my lord, first tell me all your adventures from your birth, do me this favour." Thus being entreated by him, Gunadhya proceeded to relate as follows : In Pratishthana* there is a city named Supra tishthita ; in it there dwelt once upon a time an excellent Brahman named Somasarman, and he, my friend, had two sons Vatsa and Gulmaka, and he had also born to him a third child, a daughter named 'S'rutartha. Now in course of time, that Brahnian and his wife died, and those two sons of his remained taking care of their sister. And she suddenly became pregnant. Then Vatsa and Gulma began to suspect one another, because no other man came in their sister's way : thereupon S'rutartha, who saw what was in their minds, said to those brothers, " Do not entertain evil suspicions, listen, I will tell you the truth ; there is a prince of the name of Kirtisena, brother's son to Viisuki, the king of the Nagas ;f he saw me when I was going to bathe, thereupon he was overcome with love, and after telling me his lineage and his name, made me his wife by the Gandharva marriage ; he belongs to the Brahman race, and it is by him that I am pregnant." When they heard this speech of their sister's, Vatsa and Gulma said, " What confidence can we repose in all this ?" Then she silently called to mind that Naga prince, and immediately he was thought upon, he came and said to Vatsa and Gulma, "In truth I have made your sister my wife, she is a glorious hea- venly nymph fallen down to earth in consequence of a curse, and you too have descended to earth for the same reason, but a son shall without fail be born to your sister here, and then you and she together shall be freed from your curse." Having said this he disappeared, and in a few days from that time, a son was born to S'rutartha ; know me my friend as that son.* At that very time a divine voice was heard from heaven, " This child that is born is an incarnation of virtue, and he shall be called Gunadya,t and is of the Brahman caste. Thereupon my mother and uncles, as their curse had spent its force, died, and I for my part became inconsolable. Then I flung aside my grief, and though a child I went in the strength of my self- reliance to the Deccan to acquire knowledge. Then, having in course of time learned all sciences, and become famous, I returned to my native land to exhibit my accomplishments ; and when I entered after a long absence into the city of Supratishthita, surrounded by my disciples, I saw a wonderfully splendid scene. In one place chanters were intoning according to prescribed custom the hymns of the Sama Veda, in another place Brahmans were disputing about the interpretation of the sacred books, in another place gamblers were praising gambling in these deceitful words, " Whoever knows the art of gambling, has a treasure in his grasp," and in another place, in the midst of a knot of merchants, who were talking to one another about their skill in the art of making money, a certain merchant spoke as follows :

     It is not very wonderful that a Story of the Mouse-merchant. JIT. i_ i i ,n , thntty man should acquire wealth by wealth ; but I long ago achieved prosperity without any wealth to start with. My father died before I was born, and then my mother was deprived by wicked relations of all she possessed. Then she fled through fear of them, watching over the safety of her unborn child, and dwelt in the house of Kumaradatta a friend of my father's, and there the virtuous woman gave birth to me, who was destined to be the means of her future mainte- nance ; and so she reared me up by performing menial drudgery. And as she was so poor, she persuaded a teacher by way of charity to give me some instruction in writing and ciphering. Then she said to me, " You are the son of a merchant, so you must now engage in trade, and there is a rich merchant in this country called Yisakhila ; he is in the habit of lend- ing capital to poor men of good family, go and entreat him to ghv something to start with." Then I went to his house, and he at the moment I entered, said in a rage to some merchant's son -, this dead mouse here upon the floor, even that is a commodity by which a capable man would acquire wealth, but I gave you, you good-for-nothing fellow, many dinars* and so far from increasing them, you have not even been able to preserve what you got." When I heard that, I suddenly said to th:;t Yisakhila, " I hereby take from you that mouse as capital advanced ;" saying this I took the mouse up in my hand, and wrote him a receipt for it, which he put in his strong box, and off I went. The merchant for his part burst out laughing. Well, I sold that mouse to a certain merchant as cat's-meat for two handfuls of gram, then I ground up that gram, and taking a pitcher of water, I went and stood on the cross-road in a shady place, outside the city ; there I offered with the utmost civility the water and gram to a band of wood-cutters ;f every wood -cutter gave me as a token of gratitude two pieces of wood ; and I took those pieces of wood and sold them in the market ; then for a small part of the price which I got for them, I bought a second supply of gram, and in the same way on a second day I obtained wood from the wood-cutters. Doing this every day I gradually acquired capital, and I bought from those wood-cutters all their wood for three days. Then suddenly there befell a dearth of wood on account of heavy rains, and I sold that wood for many hundred panas, with that wealth I set up a shop, and engaging in traffic, I have become a very wealthy man by my own ability. Then I made a mouse of gold, and gave it to that Visakhila, then he gave me his daughter ; and in conse- quence of my history I am known in the world by the name of Mouse. So without a coin in the world I acquired this prosperity. All the other merchants then, when they heard this story, were astonished. How can the mind help being amazed at pictures without^walls ?

   In another place a Brahman who &lor;/ of the chanter of the Kama 1 eua. A had got eight gold maslias as a present, a chanter of the Sama Veda, received the following piece of advice from a man who was a bit of a roue, " You get enough to live upon by your position as a Brahman, so you ought now to employ this gold for the purpose of learning the way of the world in order that you may become a knowing fellow." The fool said " Who will teach me ?" Thereupon the roue said to him, " This lady named Chaturika, go to her house." The Brahman said, " What am I to do there" ? The roue replied " Give her gold, and in order to please her make use of some sdma."* When he heard this, the chanter went quickly to the house of Chaturik.-i ; when he enl the lady advanced to meet him and he took a seat. Then that Brahman gave her the gold and faltered out the request, " Teach me now for thi.s fee the way of the world." Thereupon the people who were there began to titter, and he, after reflecting a little, putting his hands together in the shape of a cow's ear, so that they formed a kind of pipe, hegan, like a stupid idiot, to chant with a shrill sound the Sama Veda, so that all the roues in the house came together to see the fun ; and they said " Whence lias this jackal blundered in here ? Come, let us quickly give him the half-moonf on his throat." Thereupon the Brahman supposing that the half-moon meant an arrow with a head of that shape, and afraid of having his head cut off, rushed out of the house, bellowing out, " I have learnt the way of the world ;" then he went to the man who had sent him, and told him the whole story. He replied " when I told you to use sdma, I meant coaxing and wheedling ; what is the propriety of introducing the Veda in a matter of this kind? The fact is, I suppose, that stupidity is engrained in a man who muddles his head with the Vedas ?" So he spoke, bursting with laughter all the while, and went off to the lady's house, and said to her, " Give back to that two-legged cow his gpld- fodder." So she laughing gave back the money, and when the Brahman got it, he went back to his house as happy as if he had been born again. Witnessing strange scenes of this kind at every step, I reached the palace of the king which was like the court of Indra. And then I entered it, with my pupils going before to herald my arrival, and saw the king Satavahana sitting in his hall of audience upon a jewelled throne, surrounded by his ministers, S'arvavarman and his colleagues, as Indra is by the gods. After I had blessed him and had taken a seat, and had been honoured by the king, S'arvavarman and the other ministers praised me in the following words, "This man, O king, is famous upon the earth as skilled in all lore, and therefore his name Gunudhyaj is a true index of his nature." Satavahana hearing me praised in this style by his ministers, was pleased with me and immediately enter- tained me honourably, and appointed me to the office of Minister. Then L married a wile, and lived there comfortably, looking after the king's affairs and inst rut-ting my pupils.

     Once, as I was roaming about at leisure on the banks of the Godavari out of curiosity, I beheld a garden called Devikriti, and seeing that it was an exceedingly pleasant garden, like an earthly Nandana,* I asked the gardener how it came there, and he said to me, " My lord, according to the story which we hear from old people, long ago there came here a cortain Brahman who observed a vow of silence and abstained from food, he made this heavenly garden with a temple; then all the Brahmans assembled here out of curiosity, and that Brahman being persistently asked by them told his history. There is in this land a province called Vakakachchha on the banks of the Xarmada, in that district I was born as a Brahman, and in former times no one gave me alms, as I was lazy as well as poor ; then in a fit of annoyance I quitted my house being disgusted with life, and wandering round the holy places, I came to visit the shrine of Durga the dweller in the Vindhya hills, and having beheld that goddess, I reflected, ' People propitiate with animal offerings this giver of boons, but I will slay myself here, stupid beast that I am.' Having formed this resolve, I took in hand a sword to cut off my head. Immediately that goddess being propitious, herself said to me, ' Son, thou art perfected, do not slay thyself, remain near me ;' thus I obtained a boon from the goddess and attained divine nature ; from that day forth my hunger and thirst disappeared ; then once on a time, as I was remaining there, that goddess herself said to me, ' Go, my son, and plant in Pratishthana a glorious garden ;' thus speaking, she gave me, with her own hands, heavenly seed ; thereupon I came here and made this beautiful garden by means of her power ; and this garden you must keep in good order. Having said this, he disappeared. In this way this garden was made by the goddess long ago, my lord." When I had heard from the gardener this signal manifestation of the favour of the goddess, I went home penetrated with wonder.

    When Guiuidhya had said this, The story of Satavaha/ta. Kanablmti asked, " Why, my lord, \\as the king called Satavahana ?" Then Guuadhya said, Listen, I will tell you the reason. There was a king of great power named Dvipikarni. He had a wife named S'aktimati, whom he valued more than life, and onee upon a time a snake bit her as she was sleeping in the garden. Thereupon she died, and that king thinking only of her, though he had no son, took a vow of perpetual cha>tit,y. Then once upon a time tin- god of the moony crest said to him in a dream " While wandering in the forest thou shalt behold a boy mounted on a lion, take him and go home, he shall he thy son." Then the king woke up, and rejoiced remembering that dream, and one day in his passion for the chase he went to a di>tant wood ; there in the middle of the day that king beheld on the hank of a lotus-lake a boy splendid as the sun, riding on a lion ; the lion desiring to drink water set down the boy, and then the king remembering his dream slew it with one arrow. The creature thereupon abandoned the form of a lion, and suddenly assumed the shape of a man ; the king exclaimed, " Alas ! what means this ? tell me !" and then the man answered him " king, I am a Yaksha of the name of Sata, an attendant upon the god of wealth ; long ago I beheld the daughter of a Rishi bathing in the Ganges ; she too, when she beheld me, felt love arise in her breast, like myself : then I made her my wife by the Gandharva form of marriage ; and her relatives, finding it out, in their anger cursed me and her, saying, " You two wicked ones, doing what is right in your own eyes, shall become lions." The hermit-folk appointed that her curse should end when she gave birth to offspring, and that mine should continue longer, until I was slain by thee with an arrow. So we became a pair of lions ; she in course of time became pregnant, and then died after this boy was born, but I brought him up on the milk of other lionesses, and lo ! to-day I am released from my curse having been smitten by thee with an arrow. Therefore receive this noble son which I give thee, for this thing was foretold long ago by those hermit-folk." Having said this that Guhyaka named Sata disappeared,* and the king taking the boy went home ; and because he had ridden upon Sata he gave the boy the name of Satavahana, and in course of time he established him in his kingdom. Then, when that king Dvipikarni went to the forest, this Satavahana became sovereign of the whole earth. Having said this in the middle of his tale in answer to Kanabhuti's question, the wise Gunadhya again called to mind and went on with the main thread of his narrative. Then once upon a time, in the spring festival that king Satavahana went to visit the garden made by the goddess, of which I spake before. He roamed there for a long time like Indra in the garden of Nandana, and descended into the water of the lake to amuse himself in company with his wives. There he sprinkled his beloved ones sportively with water flung by his hands, and was sprinkled by them in return like an elephant by its females. His wives with faces, the eyes of which were slightly reddened by the colly rium washed into them, and which were streaming with water, and with bodies the proportions of which were revealed by their clinging garments, pelted him vigorously ; and as the wind strips the creepers in the forest of leaves ami ilowers, so he made his fair ones who fled into the adjoining shrubbery lose the marks on their foreheadsf and their ornaments. Then one of his qutvns tardy with the weight of her breasts, with body tender as a s'in'sJta flower, be- came exhausted with the amusement ; she not being able to endure more, said to the king who was sprinkling her with water, " do not pelt me with water-drops ;" on hearing that, the king quickly had some sweet- meats* brought ; then the queen burst out laughing and said again " king, what do we want with sweetmeats in the water ? For I said to you, do not sprinkle me with water-drops. Do you not even understand the coalescence of the words m/i and udaka, and do you not know that chapter of the grammar, how can you be such a blockhead ?" When the queen, who knew grammatical treatises, said this to him, and the attendants laughed, the king was at once overpowered with secret shame ; he left off romping in the water and immediately entered his own palace unperceived, crestfallen, and full of self-contempt. Then he remained lost in thought, bewildered, averse to food and other enjoyments, and, like a picture, even when asked a question, he answered nothing. Thinking that his only resource was to acquire learning or die, he flung himself down on a couch, and remained in an agony of grief. Then all the king's attendants, seeing that he had suddenly fallen into such a state, were utterly beside themselves to think what it could mean. Then I and S'arvavarman came at last to hear of the king's condition, and by that time the day was almost at an end. So perceiving that the king was still in an unsatisfactory condition, we immediately summoned a servant of the king named liajahansa. And he when asked by us about the state of the king's health, said this " I never before in my life saw the king in such a state of depression : and the other queens told me with much indignation that he had been humiliated to-day by that superficial blue-stocking, the daughter of Yishnusakti." When S'arvavarman and I had heard this from the mouth of the king's servant, we fell into a state of despondency, and thus reflected in our dilemma ; " If the king were afflicted with bodily di.~ we might introduce the physicians, but if his disease is mental it is im possible to find the cause of it. For there is no enemy in his country the thorns of which arc destroyed, and these subjects an- at tached to him ; no dearth of any kind is to be seen ; so how can this sudden melancholy of the king's have arisen?" After we had debated to this effect, the wise S'arvavarman said as follows " I know the cause, this king i- -,l by sorrow for his own ignorance, for he is always ex]>r desire I'or culture, saying ' I am a blockhead ;' I long ago detected this desire of his, and we have heard that the occasion of the present fit is his having ' humiliated by the queen." Thus we debated with one another and after we had passed that night, in the morning we went to the private apart- ments of tiie sovereign. There, though strict orders had been given that no one was to enter, I managed to get in with difficulty, and after me S'arvavarman slipped in quickly. I then sat down near the king ami | him this question "Why, king, art thou without cause thus des- pondent ?" Though he heard this, Satavahana nevertheless remained silent, and then S'arvavarman uttered this extraordinary speech, " King, thou didst long ago say to me, ' Make me a learned man. ' Thinking upon that I employed last night a charm to produce a dream.* Then I saw in my dream a lotus fallen from heaven, and it was opened by some heavenly youth, and out of it came a divine woman in white garments, and immediately, (.) king, she entered thy mouth. When I had seen so much I woke up, and I think without doubt that the woman who visibly entered thy mouth was Sarasvati. As soon as S'arvavarman had in these terms described his dream, the king broke his silence and said to me with the utmost earnestness, " In how short a time can a man, who is diligently taught, acquire learning ? Tell me this. For without learning all this regal splendour has no charms for me. What is the use of rank and power to a blockhead ? They are like ornaments on a log of wood." Then I said, " King, it is invariably the case that it takes men twelve years to learn grammar, the gate to all knowledge. But I, my sovereign, will teach it you in six years." When he heard that, S'arvavarman suddenly exclaimed in a fit of jealousy " How can a man accustomed to enjoyment endure hardship for so long ? So I will teach you grammar, my prince, in six months." W T hen I heard this promise which it seemed impossible to make good, I said to him in a rage, " If you teach the king in six months, I renounce at once and for ever Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the vernacular dialect, these three languages which pass current among men ;f then S'arvavarman said " And if I do not do this, I S'arvavarman, will carry your shoes on my head for twelve years." Having said this he went out ; I too went home ; and the king for his part was comforted, expecting that he would attain his object by means of one of us two. Now S'arva- varman being in a dilemma, seeing that his promise was one very difficult to perform, and regretting what he had done, told the whole story to his wife, and she grieved to hear it said to him, " My lord, in this difficulty there is no way of escape for you except the favour of the Lord Karti- ke v a. J " It is so," said S'arvavarman and determined to implore it. Accordingly in the last watch of the night, S'arvavarman set out fasting for the shrine of the god. Now I came to hear of it by means of my secret emissaries, and in the morning I told the king of it ; and he, when he heard it, wondered what would happen. Then a trusty Rajput called Sinhagupta said to him, " When I heard, king, that thou wast afflicted I was seized with great despondency. Then I went out of this city, and was preparing to cut off my own head hefore the goddess Durga in order to ensure thy happiness. Then a voice from heaven forbade me, saying, ' Do not so, the king's wish shall be fulfilled.' Therefore, I believe, thou art sure of success." When he had said this, that Sinhagupta took leave of the king, and rapidly despatched two emissaries after S'arvavarman ; who feeding only on air, observing a vow of silence, steadfast in resolution, reached at last the shrine of the Lord Kartikeya. There, pleased with his penance that spared not the body, Kartikeya favoured him according to his desire ; then the two spies sent by Sinhagupta came into the king's presence and reported the minister's success. On hearing that news the king was delighted and I was despondent, as the cMtaka joys, and the swan grieves, on seeing the cloud.* Then S'arvavarman arrived successful by the favour of Kartikeya, and communicated to the king all the sciences, which presented themselves to him on his thinking of them. And immediately they were revealed to the king Satavahana. For what cannot the grace of the Supreme Lord accomplish ? Then the kingdom rejoiced on hearing that the king had thus obtained all knowledge, and there was high festival kept throughout it ; and that moment banners were flaunted from every house, and being fanned by the wind, seemed to dance. Then S'arvavarman was honoured with abundance of jewels fit for a king by the sovereign, who bowed humbly before him, calling him his spiritual preceptor, and he was made governor of the territory called Vakakachchha, which lies along the bank of the Narmada. The king being highly pleased with that Rajput Sinhagupta, who first heard by the mouth of his spies, that the boon had been obtained from the six-faced god,f made him equal to himself in splendour and power. And that queen too, the daughter of Vishnusakti, who was the cause of his acquiring learning, he exalted at one bound above all the queens, through affection anointingj her with his own hand.