about the delightful gardens on the top of the mountain, while he was thus strolling about, the sound of soft music saluted his ears, and proceeding towards it, he saw a beautiful female Gundharva, he went up to her and besought her to direct him in the right road. As the bramin was of a very comely person, and the female Gundharva had never before beheld a man, she fell in love with him, but was resolved to behave with reserve, so that he might not discover her real sentiments—she therefore reprimanded him for entering her hower without permission, and told him to find out the road as well as he could himself. Pravarakhya discouraged at the harsh tone, in which the female Gundharva spoke, made a precipitate retreat and making his way to a neighbouring grove, performed intense devotions to the god of fire, who, it is said, appeared to him under the semblance of a bramin and conveyed him to his own dwelling house, in the mean time the female Gundharva was inconsolable at his loss, and had no idea that her behaviour to the bramin would have ended in this manner, she expressed her grief by the most extravagant
