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ness? Do yon seek to be delivered from the world by binding yourself with the conceit of controversy? You are quenching heat with fire, and removing the feeling of cold with snow; you are trying to cross the sea on a boat of stone; you are striving to put out a fire by fanning it. The virtue of Bráhmans is patience, that of Kshatriyas is the rescue of the distressed; the characteristic quality of one who desires liberation is quietism; disputatiousness is said to be the characteristic of Rákshasas. Therefore a man who desires liberation must be of a quiet temperament, putting away the pain arising from alternations of opposites, fearing the hindrances of the world. So cut down with the axe of quietism this tree of mundane existence, and do not water it with the water of controversial conceit." When he said this to the religious student, he was pleased, and bowed humbly before him, and saying, " Be you my spiritual guide," he departed by the way that he came. And the mendicant remained, laughing, where he was, at the foot of the tree, and then he heard from within it the conversation of a Yaksha, who was joking with his wife.*[1] And while the mendicant was listening, the Yaksha in sport struck his wife with a garland of flowers, and she, like a cunning female, pretended that she was dead, and immediately her attendants raised a cry of grief. And after a long time she opened her eyes, as if her life had returned to her. Then the Yaksha her husband said to her; " What have you seen?" Then she told the following invented story; " When you struck me with the garland, I saw a black man come, with a noose in his hand, with flaming eyes, tall, with upstanding hair, terrible, darkening the whole horizon with his shadow. The ruffian took me to the abode of Yama, but his officers there turned him back, and made him let me go." When the Yakshiní said this, the Yaksha laughed, and said to her, " O dear ! women cannot be free from deception in any thing that they do. Who ever died from being struck with flowers? Who ever returned from the house of Yama? You silly woman, you have imitated the tricks of the women of Páțaliputra."
Story of the wife of king Sinháksha,and the wives of his principal courtiers.:— For in that city there is a king named Sinháksha: and his wife, taking with her the wives of his minister, commander-in-chief, chaplain, and physician, went once on the thirteenth day of the white fortnight to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Sarasvatí, the protecting deity of that land. There they, queen and aU, met on the way sick persons, hump-
- ↑ * Cp. the Yaksha to whom Phalabhúti prays in Ch. XX. The belief in tree-spirits is shown by Tylor in his Primitive Culture to exist in many parts of the world. (See the Index in his second volume.) Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (p. 70 and ff) gives an account of the tree-worship which prevailed amongst the ancient Germans. See also an interesting article by Mr. Wallhouse in the Indian Antiquary for June 1880.
