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tain-peak to enjoy himself with her. There his female was shot by a fowler; when he saw that, he flew away distracted with fear and grief. The fowler went off, taking with him the dead female swan, and on the way he saw many armed men at a distance, coming towards him, and he thought that they would perhaps take the bird from him, so he cut some grass with his knife, and covering up the bird with that, left her on the ground. After the men had gone, the fowler returned to take the female wan. But it happened that among the grass which he had cut was a herb, which possessed the power of raising the dead to life. By means of the juice of this herb the female swan was restored to life, and before his eyes she flung off the grass, and flew up into the sky, and disappeared.
But in the meanwhile the male swan went and settled on the shore of a lake among a flock of swans, distracted with grief at seeing his mate in this state.*[1] Immediately a certain fisherman threw a net, and caught all those birds, and thereupon sat down to take his food. Then the female swan came there in search of her husband, and found him caught in the net, and in her grief she cast her eyes in every direction. Then she saw on the bank of the lake a necklace of gems, which a certain person, who had gone into the water to bathe, had laid on top of his clothes. She went and carried off the necklace without that person seeing her do it, and she flew gently through the air past the fisherman, to shew him the necklace. The fisherman, when he saw the female swan with the necklace in her beak, left the net full of birds, and ran after her, stick in hand. But the female swan deposited the necklace upon the top of a distant rock, and the fisher- man proceeded to climb up the rock to get the necklace. When the female swan saw that, she went and struck in the eye with her beak a monkey that was asleep on a tree, near where her husband lay caught in the net. The monkey, being terrified by the blow, fell on the net and tore it, and so all the swans escaped from it. Then the couple of swans were re-united, and they told one another their adventures, and in their joy amused themselves as they would. The fisherman, after getting the necklace, came back to fetch the birds, and the man whose necklace had been taken away, met him as he was looking for it, and as the fact of the fisherman's being in possession of the necklace was revealed by his fear, he recovered it from him and cut off" his right hand with his sword. And the two swans, sheltering themselves under one lotus by way of umbrella, rose up in the middle of the day from the lake and roamed in the sky.
And soon the two birds reached the bank of a river haunted by a certain hermit, who was employed in worshipping Śiva. Then the couple of swans were shot through with one arrow by a fowler, as they were flying along, and fell together to the earth. And the lotus, which they had used
- ↑ * Dr. Keru conjectures svam.
