The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story

At that time when I was separated from you by the curse of the Nága, I was so bewildered that I was conscious of nothing, but went on roaming through that far-extending wilderness. At last I recovered consciousness and thought in my grief, “Alas! this is a terrible dispensation of unruly destiny. How will Mṛigánkadatta, who would suffer even in a palace, exist in this desert of burning sand? And how will his companions exist? Thus reflecting frequently in my mind, I happened, as I was roaming about, to come upon the abode of Durgá. And I entered her temple, in which were offered day and night many and various living creatures, and which therefore resembled the palace of the god of Death. After I had worshipped the goddess there, I saw the corpse of a man who had offered himself, and who held in his hand a sword that had pierced his throat. When I saw that, I also, on account of my grief at being separated from you, determined to propitiate the goddess by the sacrifice of myself. So I ran and seized his sword. But at that moment some compassionate female ascetic, after forbidding me from a distance by a prohibitive shake of the head, came up to me, and dissuaded me from death, and after asking me my story said to me; “Do not act so, the re-union even of the dead has been seen in this world, much more of the living. Hear this story in illustration of it.”