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their promises arc never falsified; and resolute men, after enduring separation, obtain reunion with those they love. Were not Rámabhadra, king Nala, and your own grandfather,*[1] after enduring separation, reunited to their beloved wives? And was not Muktáphalaketu, emperor of the Vidyádharas, reunited to Padmávatí, after he had been separated from her? And now listen, king; I will tell you the story of that couple.' When Gomukha had said this, he told me the following tale."
Story of king Brahmadatta and the Swans.†[2]:—There is in this country a city famous over the earth by the name of Váránasí, which, like the body of Śiva, is adorned with the Ganges, and bestows emancipation. With the flags on its temples swayed up and down by the wind, it seems to be ever saying to men " Come hither, and attain salvation." With the pinnacles of its white palaces it looks like the plateau of mount Kailása, the habitation of the god with the moon for a diadem, and it is full of troops of Śiva's devoted servants.‡[3]
In that city there lived of old time a king named Brahmadatta, §[4]exclusively devoted to Śiva, a patron of Bráhmans, brave, generous, and compassionate. His commands passed current through the earth, they stumbled not in rocky defiles, they were not whelmed in seas, there were no continents which they did not cross. He had a queen named Somaprabha,||[5] who was dear and delightful to him as the moonlight to the chakora, and he was as eager to drink her in with his eyes. And he had a Bráhman minister named Śivabhúti, equal to Vŗihaspati in intellect, who had fathomed the meaning of all the Śastras.
One night, that king, as he was lying on a bed on the top of a palace exposed to the rays of the moon, saw a couple of swans crossing through the air, with bodies of gleaming gold, looking like two golden lotuses opened in the water of the heavenly Ganges, ¶[6] and attended by a train of king-geese. When that wonderful pair had passed from his eyes, the king was for a long time afflicted, and his mind was full of regret at no longer enjoying
- ↑ * Pitámaháh must be a misprint for pitámahah, as is apparent from the India Office MSS.
- ↑ † This story is in the original prefaced by " Iti Padmávatí kathá." It continues to the end of the book, but properly speaking, the story of Padmávati does not commence until chapter 115.
- ↑ ‡ There is a reference to the sectaries of Śiva in Benares, and the Ganas of Śiva on mount Kailása.
- ↑ § Here we have a longer form of the story of Brahmadatta found on pp. 12 and 13 of Vol. I. Dr. Rajendralal Mitra informs me that it is also found in a MS. called the Bodhisattva Avadána, one of the Hodgson MSS.'
- ↑ || i.e., moonlight.
- ↑ ¶ There is probably a double meaning. The clouds are compared to the Ganges, and it is obvious that geese would cluster round lotuses.
