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teacher heard that, he said, " Out on you, fool, devoted to your belly ! Only half one watch of the day has passed: how can it be your time for begging now?" When the wicked pupil heard that, he was angry, and
said to his teacher; " Out on you, you decrepit old creature ! I am no
longer your pupil, and you are no longer my teacher. I will go elsewhere, carry this vessel yourself." When he had said this, he put down in front of him his stick and water-vessel, and got up and went away.
Then the hermit left his hut, laughing as he went, and came to the place where the young Bráhman had been brought to be burned. And when the hermit saw him, with the people lamenting for the flower of his youth, being afflicted with old age, and possessed of magical powers, he determined to enter his body. So he quickly went aside, and first wept aloud, and immediately afterwards he danced with appropriate gesticulations.* [1]Then the ascetic, longing to be young again, abandoned his own body, and at once entered by magic power that young Bráhman's body. And immediately the young Bráhman on the pyre, which was ready prepared, returned to life, and rose up with a yawn. When his relations and all the people saw that, they raised a loud shout of " Hurrah ! he is alive ! he is alive !"
Then that ascetic, who was a mighty sorcerer, and had thus entered the young Bráhman's body, not intending to abandon his vow, told them all the following falsehood; " Just now, when I went to the other world, Śiva himself restored my life to me, telling me that I must take upon me the vow of a Páśupata ascetic. And I must this moment go into a solitary place and support this vow, otherwise I cannot live, so depart you, and I also will depart." Saying this to all those present, the resolute votary, bewildered with mixed feelings of joy and grief, dismissed them to their own homes. And he himself went, and threw that former body of his into a ravine; and so that great magician, who had taken the vow, having become young, went away to another place.
When the Vetála had told this story that night on the way, he again said to king Trivikramasena, " Tell me, king, why did that mighty magician, when entering another body, first weep, and then dance? I have a great desire to know this."
When that king, who was a chief of sages, heard this question of the Vetála's, fearing the curse, he broke silence, and gave him this answer, " Hear what the feelings of that ascetic were. He was grieved because he thought that he was just going to abandon that body, which had grown up with him through many years, by living in which he had acquired magic power, and which his parents had fondled, when he was a child, so he wept violently; for affection for one's body is a deeply rooted feeling.
- ↑ * Oesterley (p. 221,) tells us that a similar incident is found in the Thousand and One lights, Breslau, Vol. I, p. 62.
