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for a woman, then again I run a risk of outrage, and death is better than that. So I must deliver myself, and disregard this merchant my friend. For good women must regard the duty of virtuous wives, not friends and things of that kind." Thus she determined, and searching about, found a hollow like a house in the middle of a tree, as it were, an opening made for her by the earth out of pity. There she entered and covered her body with leaves and such like things ; and remained supported by the hope of reunion with her husband. Then, in the dead of night, a large force of bandits suddenly fell upon the caravan with uplifted weapons, and surrounded it on all sides. And there followed a storm of fight, with howling bandits for thunder-clouds, and the gleam of weapons for long-continued lightning-flashes, and a rain of blood. At last the bandits, being more powerful, slew the merchant-prince Samudrasena and his followers, and went off with all his wealth.
In the meanwhile Kírtisená was listening to the tumult, and that she was not forcibly robbed of breath is to be ascribed to fate only. Then the night departed, and the keen-rayed sun arose, and she went out from that hollow in the middle of the tree. Surely the gods themselves preserve in misfortune good women exclusively devoted to their husbands, and of unfailing virtue; for not only did a lion beholding her in the lonely wood spare her, but a hermit that had come from somewhere or other, when she asked him for information, comforted her and gave her a drink of water from his vessel, and then disappeared in some direction or other, after telling her the road to take. Then satisfied as if with nectar, free from hunger and thirst, that woman, devoted to her husband, set out by the road indicated by the hermit. Then she saw the sun mounted on the western mountain, stretching forth his rays like fingers, as if saying " Wait patiently one night"— and so she entered an opening in the root of a forest tree which looked like a house, and closed its mouth with another tree. And in the evening she saw through the opening of a chink in the door of her retreat a terrible Rakshasi approaching, accompanied by her young sons. She was terrified, thinking to herself— " Lo ! I shall be devoured by this Rákshasí after escaping all my other misfortunes"— and in the meanwhile the Rákshasí ascended that tree. And her sons ascended after her, and immediately said to that Rákshasí,*[1]— " Mother, give us something to eat." Then the Rákshasí said to her children,— " To-day, my children, I went to a great cemetery, but I did not obtain any food, and though I entreated the congregation of witches, they
- ↑ * Cp. Thorpe's Yuletide Stories, p. 341, cited before on p. 25, also Sagas from the Far East, p. 162. Tho Mongolian version supplies the connecting link between India and Europe. In the Sagas from the Far East, the Rákshasas are replaced by crows.
