206
and there said to the superintendent, " Here is a Bráhman gambler arrived from a foreign land, a hero who is able to assist that enchanter in performing incantations for the good of the king." When the superintendent heard this, he questioned Śrídarśana, and when he confirmed the words of the old lady, he treated him with great respect, and led him quickly into the presence of the king.
And Śrídarśana, being introduced by him, beheld the king, who was thin and pale as the new moon. And the king Śrisena observed that Śrídarśana, who bowed before him and sat down, was of a taking appearance, and pleased with his look, he felt comforted, and said to him, " I know that your exertions will certainly put an end to my disease; my body tells me this, for .the mere sight of you has quieted its sufferings. So aid the enchanter in this matter." When the king said this, Śrídarśana said to him " The enterprise is a mere trifle." Then the king summoned the enchanter and said to him, " This hero will aid you ; do what you said." When that enchanter heard that, he said to Śrídarśana,
" My good sir, if you are able to assist me in raising a Vetála, come to me in the cemetery at night-fall this very day, the fourteenth of the black fortnight." When the ascetic, who practised magic, had said this, he went away, and Śrídarśana took leave of the king and returned to that asylum.
There he took food with Padmisțhá and Mukharaka, and at night he went alone, sword in hand, to the cemetery. It was full of many ghosts, empty of men, inauspicious, full of roaring jackals, covered with impenetrable darkness, but shewed in some places a faint gleam where the funeral pyres were.*[1] The hero Śrídarśana wandered about in that place of horrors and saw the enchanter in the middle of it. His whole body was smeared with ashes, he had a Bráhmanical thread of hair, he wore a turban made of the clothes of the dead, and he was clad in a black garment. Śrídarśana approached him, and made himself known to him, and then girding up his loins, he said, " Tell me, what shall I do for you?" The enchanter answered in high spirits, " Half a cos only to the west of this place there is an Asoka tree, the leaves of which are burnt with the hot flame of funeral pyres. At the foot of it there is a corpse, go and bring it here unharmed."
Then Śrídarśana said, " I will," and going quickly to the place he saw some one else taking away the corpse. So he ran and tried to drag it from the shoulder of that person, who would not let it go, and said to him, " Let go this corpse: where are you taking my friend whom I have to burn?" Then that second person said to Śrídarśana, " I will not let the dead man go; I am his friend; what have you to do with him?"While they were dragging the corpse from one another's shoulders, and making these mutual recrimina-
- ↑ * Here there is a pun: upachitam means also " concentrated."
