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

In that town there dwelt a Rájpút, who was in the service of the monarch, and lived on the proceeds of a village. His name was Śúrasena, and he had a wife named Susheṇá, who was a native of Málava. She was in every respect well suited to him, and he loved her more than life. One day the king summoned him, and he was about to set out for his camp, when his loving wife said to him, “My husband, you ought not to go off and leave me alone; for I shall not be able to exist here for a moment without you.” When Śúrasena’s wife said this to him, he replied, “How can I help going, when the king summons me? Do you not understand my position, fair one? You see, I am a Rájpút, and a servant, dependent on another for my subsistence.” When his wife heard this, she said to him with tears in her eyes, “If you must of necessity go, I shall manage to endure it somehow, if you return not one day later than the commencement of spring.” Having heard this, he at last said to her, “Agreed, my dear! I will return on the first day of the month Chaitra, even if I have to leave my duty.”

When he said this, his wife was at last induced to let him go; and so Śúrasena went to attend on the king in his camp. And his wife remained at home, counting the days in eager expectation, looking for the joyful day on which spring begins, on which her husband was to return. At last, in the course of time, that day of the spring-festival arrived, resonant with the songs of cuckoos, that seemed like spells to summon the god of love. The humming of bees drunk with the fragrance of flowers, fell on the ear, like the twanging of Cupid’s bow as he strung it.

On that day Śúrasena’s wife Susheṇá said to herself, “Here is that spring-festival arrived; my beloved will, without fail, return to-day. So she bathed, and adorned herself, and worshipped the god of Love, and remained eagerly awaiting his arrival. But the day came to an end and her husband did not return, and during the course of that night she was grievously afflicted by despondency, and said to herself, “The hour of my death has come, but my husband has not returned; for those whose souls are exclusively devoted to the service of another do not care for their own families.” While she was making these reflections, with her heart fixed upon her husband, her breath left her body, as if consumed by the forest-fire of love.

In the meanwhile Śúrasena, eager to behold his wife, and true to the appointed day, got himself, though with great difficulty, relieved from attendance on the king, and mounting a swift camel, accomplished a long journey, and arriving in the last watch of the night, reached his own house. There he beheld that wife of his lying dead, with all her ornaments on her, looking like a creeper, with its flowers full blown, rooted up by the wind. When he saw her, he was beside himself, and he took her up in his arms, and the bereaved husband’s life immediately left his body in an outburst of lamentation.

But when their family goddess Chaṇḍí, the bestower of boons, saw that that couple had met their death in this way, she restored them to life out of compassion. And after breath had returned to them, having each had a proof of the other’s affection, they continued inseparable for the rest of their lives.

“Thus, in the season of spring, the fire of separation, fanned by the wind from the Malaya mountain, is intolerable to all creatures.” When Gomukha had told this tale, Naraváhanadatta, thinking over it, suddenly became despondent. The fact is, in magnanimous men, the spirits, by being elevated or depressed, indicate beforehand the approach of good or evil fortune.4

Then the day came to an end, and the sovereign performed his evening worship, and went to his bedroom, and got into bed, and reposed there. But in a dream at the end of the night5 he saw his father being dragged away by a black female towards the southern quarter. The moment he had seen this, he woke up, and suspecting that some calamity might have befallen his father, he thought upon the science named Prajnapti, who thereupon presented herself, and he addressed this question to her, “Tell me, how has my father the king of Vatsa been going on? For I am alarmed about him on account of a sight which I saw in an evil dream.” When he said this to the science that had manifested herself in bodily form, she said to him, “Hear what has happened to your father the king of Vatsa.

“When he was in Kauśámbí, he suddenly heard from a messenger, who had come from Ujjayiní, that king Chaṇḍamahásena was dead, and the same person told him that his wife the queen Angáravatí had burnt herself with his corpse. This so shocked him, that he fell senseless upon the ground: and when he recovered consciousness, he wept for a long time, with queen Vásavadattá and his courtiers, for his father-in-law and mother-in-law who had gone to heaven. But his ministers roused him by saying to him, ‘In this transient world what is there that hath permanence? Moreover you ought not to weep for that king, who has you for a son-in-law, and Gopálaka for a son, and whose daughter’s son is Naraváhanadatta.’ When he had been thus admonished and roused from his prostration, he gave the offering of water to his father-in-law and mother-in-law.

“Then that king of Vatsa said, with throat half-choked with tears, to his afflicted brother-in-law Gopálaka, who remained at his side out of affection,6 ‘Rise up, go to Ujjayiní, and take care of your father’s kingdom, for I have heard from a messenger that the people are expecting you.’ When Gopálaka heard this, he said, weeping, to the king of Vatsa, ‘I cannot bear to leave you and my sister, to go to Ujjayiní. Moreover, I cannot bring myself to endure the sight of my native city, now that my father is not in it. So let Pálaka, my younger brother, be king there with my full consent.’ When Gopálaka had by these words shown his unwillingness to accept the kingdom, the king of Vatsa sent his commander-in-chief Rumaṇvat to the city of Ujjayiní, and had his younger brother-in-law, named Pálaka, crowned king of it, with his elder brother’s consent.

“And reflecting on the instability of all things, he became disgusted with the objects of sense, and said to Yangandharáyaṇa and his other ministers, ‘In this unreal cycle of mundane existence all objects are at the end insipid; and I have ruled my realm, I have enjoyed pleasures, I have conquered my enemies; I have seen my son in the possession of paramount sway over the Vidyádharas; and now my allotted time has passed away together with my connections; and old age has seized me by the hair to hand me over to death; and wrinkles have invaded my body, as the strong invade the kingdom of a weakling;7 so I will go to mount Kálinjara, and abandoning this perishable body, will there obtain the imperishable mansion of which they speak.’ When the ministers had been thus addressed by the king, they thought over the matter; and then they all and queen Vásavadattá said to him with calm equanimity, ‘Let it be, king, as it has pleased your highness; by your favour we also will try to obtain a high position in the next world.’

“When they had said this to the king, being like-minded with himself, he formed a deliberate resolution, and said to his elder brother-in-law Gopálaka, who was present, ‘I look upon you and Naraváhanadatta as equally my sons; so take care of this Kauśámbí, I give you my kingdom.’ When the king of Vatsa said this to Gopálaka, he replied, ‘My destination is the same as yours, I cannot bear to leave you.’ This he asserted in a persistent manner, being ardently attached to his sister; whereupon the king of Vatsa said to him, assuming8 an anger, that he did not feel, ‘To-day you have become disobedient, so as to affect a hypocritical conformity to my will; and no wonder, for who cares for the command of one who is falling from his place of power.’ When the king spoke thus roughly to him, Gopálaka wept, with face fixed on the ground, and though he had determined to go to the forest, he turned back for a moment from his intention.

“Then the king mounted an elephant, and accompanied by the queens Vásavadattá and Padmávatí, set out with his ministers. And when he left Kauśámbí, the citizens followed him, with their wives, children, and aged sires, crying aloud and raining a tempest of tears. The king comforted them by saying to them, ‘Gopálaka will take care of you,’ and so at last he induced them to return, and passed on to mount Kálinjara. And he reached it, and went up it, and worshipped Śiva, and holding in his hand his lyre Ghoshavatí, that he had loved all his life, and accompanied by his queens that were ever at his side, and Yangandharáyaṇa and his other ministers, he hurled himself from the cliff. And even as they fell, a fiery chariot came and caught up the king and his companions, and they went in a blaze of glory to heaven.”

When Naraváhanadatta heard this from the science, he exclaimed, “Alas! my father!” and fell senseless on the ground. And when he recovered consciousness, he bewailed his father and mother and his father’s ministers, in company with his own ministers, who had lost their fathers.

But the chiefs of the Vidyádharas and Dhanavatí admonished him, saying, “How is it, king, that you are beside yourself, though you know the nature of this versatile world that perishes in a moment, and is like the show of a juggler? And how can you lament for your parents that are not to be lamented for, as they have done all they had to do on earth; who have seen you their son sole emperor over all the Vidyádharas?” When he had been thus admonished, he offered water to his parents, and put another question to that science, “Where is my uncle Gopálaka now? What did he do?” Then that science went on to say to the king,

“When the king of Vatsa had gone to the mountain from which he meant to throw himself, Gopálaka, having lamented for him and his sister, and considering all things unstable, remained outside the city, and summoning his brother Pálaka from Ujjayiní, made over to him that kingdom of Kauśámbí also. And then, having seen his younger brother established in two kingdoms, he went to the hermitage of Kaśyapa in the ascetic-grove on the Black Mountain,9 bent on abandoning the world. And there your uncle Gopálaka now is, clothed with a dress of bark, in the midst of self-mortifying hermits.”

When Naraváhanadatta heard that, he went in a chariot to the Black Mountain, with his suite, eager to visit that uncle. There he alighted from the sky, surrounded by Vidyádhara princes, and beheld that hermitage of the hermit Kaśyapa. It seemed to gaze on him with many roaming black antelope like rolling eyes, and to welcome him with the songs of its birds. With the lines of smoke ascending into the sky, where pious men were offering the Agnihotra oblations, it seemed to point the way to heaven to the hermits. It was full of many mountain-like huge elephants, and resorted to by troops of monkeys10; and so seemed like a strange sort of Pátála, above ground, and free from darkness.

In the midst of that grove of ascetics, he beheld his uncle surrounded by hermits, with long matted locks, clothed in the bark of a tree, looking like an incarnation of patience. And Gopálaka, when he saw his sister’s son approach, rose up and embraced him, and pressed him to his bosom with tearful eyes. Then they, both of them, lamented their lost dear ones with renewed grief; whom will not the fire of grief torture, when fanned by the blast of a meeting with relations? When even the animals there were pained to see their grief, Kaśyapa and the other hermits came up and consoled those two. Then that day came to an end, and next morning the emperor entreated Gopálaka to come and dwell in his kingdom. But Gopálaka said to him, “What, my child, do you not suppose that I have all the happiness I desire by thus seeing you? If you love me, remain here in this hermitage, during this rainy season, which has arrived.”