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a garden, and Śaktideva got down from its back unobserved and left it, but while he was roaming about there, he saw two women engaged in gathering flowers; he approached them slowly, who were astonished at his appearance, and he asked them, " What place is this, good ladies, and who are you?" And they said to him; " Friend, this is a city called the Golden City, a seat of the Vidyádharas, and in it there dwells a Vidyádharí, named Chandraprabhá, and know that we are the gardeners in her garden, and we are gathering these flowers for her." Then the Brahman said; " Obtain for me an interview with your mistress here." When they heard this, they consented, and the two women conducted the young man to the palace in their city. When he reached it, he saw that it was glittering with pillars of precious stones, and had walls of gold,*[1] as it were the very rendezvous of prosperity. And all the attendants , when they saw him arrived there, went and told Chandraprabhá the marvellous tidings of the arrival of a mortal; then she gave a command to the warder, and immediately had the Bráhman brought into the palace and conducted into her presence; when he entered, he beheld her there giving a feast to his eyes, like the Creator's ability to create marvels, represented in bodily form. And she rose from her jewelled couch, while he was still far off, and honoured him with a welcome herself, overpowered by beholding him. And when he had taken a seat, she asked him, " Auspicious sir, who are you, that have come here in such guise, and how did you reach this land inaccessible to men?" When Chandraprabhá in her curiosity asked him this question, Śaktideva told her his country and his birth and his name, and he related to her how he had come in order to obtain the princess Kanakarekhá as the reward of beholding the Golden City. When Chandraprabhá heard that, she thought a little and heaved a deep sigh, and said to Śaktideva in private; " Listen, I am now about to tell you something, fortunate sir. There is in this land a king of the Vidyádharas named Śaśikhanda, and we four daughters were born to him in due course; I am the oldest Chandraprabhá, and the next is Chandrarekhá, and the third is Śasirekhá and the fourth Śasiprabhá. We gradually grew up to womanhood in our father's house, and once upon a time those three sisters of mine went together to the shore of the Ganges to bathe, while I was detained at home by illness; then they began to play in the water, and in the insolence of youth they sprinkled with water a hermit named Agryatapas, while he was in the stream. That hermit in his wrath cursed those girls, who had carried their merriment too far, saying: " You wicked maidens, he born all of you in the world of mortals." When our father hoard that, he went and pacified the great hermit, and the hermit told how the curse of each of them severally should end, and appointed to each of them in her mortal condition the power of remembering her former existence, supplemented with divine insight. Then, they having left their bodies and gone
- ↑ * We should read sauvarnabhitti.
