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about his arrival, but know that he will be here soon. While Náráyaní was saying this to the Mothers, there came there Bhairava*[1] the lord of the company of Mothers. And he, having been honoured with gifts by all the Mothers, spent some time in dancing, and sported with the witches.
And while Chandrasvámin was surveying that from the summit of a tree, he saw a slave belonging to Náráyaní, and she saw him. And as chance would have it, they fell in love with one another, and the goddess Náráyaní perceived their feelings. And when Bhairava had departed, accompanied by the witches, she, lingering behind, summoned Chandrasvámin who was on the tree. And when he came down, she said to him and her slave: " Are you in love with one another?" And they confessed the truth, and said they were, and thereupon she dismissed her anger and said to Chandrasvámin, " I am pleased with thee for confessing the truth, so I will not curse thee, but I will give thee this slave, live in happiness." When the Bráhman heard this, he said— " Goddess, though my mind is fickle, I hold it in check, I do not touch a strange woman. For this is the nature of the mind, but bodily sin should be avoided." When that firm-souled Bráhman said this, the goddess said to him— " I am pleased with thee and I give thee this boon: thou shalt quickly find thy children. And receive from me this unfading lotus that destroys poison." When the goddess had said this, she gave the Bráhman Chaudrasvámin a lotus, and disappeared from his eyes.
And he, having received the lotus, set out, at the end of the night, and roaming along reached the city of Tárápura, where his son Mahípála and his daughter were living in the house of that Bráhman minister Anantasvámin. There he went and recited at the door of that minister, in order to obtain food, having heard that he was hospitable. And the minister, having been informed by the door-keepers, had him introduced by them, and when he saw that he was learned, invited him to dinner. And when he was invited, having heard that there was a lake there, named Anantahrada, that washed away sin, he went to bathe there. While he was returning after bathing, the Bráhman heard all round him in the city a cry of grief. And when he asked the cause, the people said to him— " There is in this city a Bráhman boy, of the name of Mahípála, who was found in the forest by the
- ↑ * He seems to correspond to tho Junker Voland or Herr Urian of the "Walpurgisnacht; (see Bayard Taylor's notes to his translation of Goethe's Faust). See also, for the assembly of witches and their uncanny president, Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, pp. 323 and 372. In Bartsch's Sagen &c. aus Meklenburg, pp. 11- 44, will be found the recorded confessions of many witches, who deposed to having danced with the Teutonic Bhairava on the Blocksherg. The Mothers of the second part of Faust probably come from Greece.
