619
gave me an evasive answer, saying, " Here the Bráhmany ducks stay on
the banks, the fish in the water, the bees in the lotuses, but I have never seen any part where travellers stay." When I got this answer, I was quite nonplussed, and I entered the city with Śaśin.
There Śaśin saw a boy crying at the door of a house, with a warm*[1] rice-pudding on a plate in front of him, and he said, " Dear me ! this is a foolish child not to eat the pudding in front of him, but to vex himself with useless weeping." When the child heard this, he wiped his eyes, and said laughing, " You fools do not know the advantages I get by crying. The pudding gradually cools and so becomes nice, and another good comes out of it; my phlegm is diminished thereby. These are the advantages I derive from crying; I do not cry out of folly; but you country bumpkins are fools because you do not see what I do it for."
When the boy said this, Śasśin and I were quite abashed at our stupidity, and we went away astonished to another part of the town. There we saw a beautiful young lady on the trunk of a mango-tree, gathering mangoes, while her attendants stood at its foot. We said to the young lady, " Give us also some mangoes, fair one." And she answered, " Would you like to eat your mangoes cold or hot? " When I heard that, I said to her, wishing to penetrate the mystery, " We should like, lovely one, to eat some warm ones first, and to have the others afterwards." When she heard this, she flung down some mango-fruits into the dust on the ground. We blew the dust off them and then ate them. Then the young lady and her attendants laughed, and she said to us, " I first gave you these warm mangoes, and you cooled them by blowing on them, and then ate them; catch these cool ones, which will not require blowing on, in your clothes." When she bad said this, she threw some more fruits into the flaps of our garments.
We took them, and left that place thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. Then I said to Śaśin and my other companions, " Upon my word I must marry this clever girl, and pay her out for the way in which she has made a fool of me; otherwise what becomes of my reputation for sharpness? " When I said this to them, they found out her father's house, and on a subsequent day we went there disguised so that we could not be recognised.
And while we were reading the Veda there, her father the Bráhman Yajnasvámin came up to us, and said, " Where do you come from? " We said to that rich and noble Bráhman, " We have come here from the city of Máyápurí to study; " thereupon he said to us, " Then stay the
- ↑ * I think we should read ushne. I believe that Nos. 1882 and 3003 have this, judging from the way in which shn is usually formed in those MSS.
