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slaves though they bo, for they eat to their fill of the fresh meat of fish !" But the other, who was a Chandála, thought, the moment he saw those fishermen, " Out on these destroyers of life, and devourers of raw flesh ! So why should I stand here and behold their faces?" Saying this to himself, he closed his eyes and remained buried in his own thoughts. And in course of time those two, the Bráhman and the Chandála, died of starvation; the Bráhman was eaten by dogs on the bank, the Chandála rotted in the water of the Ganges. So that Bráhman, not having disciplined his spirit, was born in the family of a fisherman, but owing to the virtue of the holy place, he remembered his former existence. As for that Chandála, who possessed self-control, and whose mind was not marred by passion, he was born as a king in a palace on that very bank of the Ganges, and recollected his former birth. And of those two, who were born with a remembrance of their former existence, the one suffered misery being a fisherman, the other being a king enjoyed happiness.
" Such is the root of the tree of virtue; according to the purity or impurity of a man's heart is without doubt the fruit which he receives." Having said this to the queen Tárádattá, king Kalingadatta again said to her in the course of conversation, " Moreover actions which are really distinguished by great courage produce fruit, since prosperity follows on. courage; and to illustrate this I will tell the following wonderful tale. Listen !"
Story of king Vikramasinha and the two Bráhmans:— There is in Avanti a city named Ujjayiní, famous in the world, which is the dwelling-place of Siva,*[1] and which gleams with its white palaces as if with the peaks of Kailása, come thither in the ardour of their devotion to the god. This vast city, profound as the sea, having a splendid emperor for its water, had hundreds of armies entering it, as hundreds of rivers flow into the sea, and was the refuge of allied kings, as the sea is of mountains that retain their wings, †[2] In that city there was a king who had the name of Vikramasinha, ‡[3] a name that thoroughly expressed his character, for his enemies were like deer and never met him in fight. And he, because he could never find any enemy to face him, became disgusted with weapons and the might of his arm, and was inwardly grieved as he never obtained the joy of battle. Then his minister Amaragupta, who discovered his
- ↑ * In the original Mahákála, an epithet of Śiva in his character as the destroying deity.
- ↑ † Generally only one mountain named Maináka is said to have fled into the sea, and retained its wings when Indra clipped those of the others. The passage is of course an elaborate pun.
- ↑ ‡ i.e. lion of valour.
