V
SHANKHA
THE GARLAND OF SHELLS
THERE was in a certain country a merchant with a son and a daughter. The former was in due course married to a girl in every way suitable; but the latter, being humpbacked, no one consented to be tied to her in the bonds of matrimony. In course of time the merchant died, leaving his wealth and business to his son, Shankha,[1] then a young man. The youth, however, was solely given up to amusements, and never pursued any vocation that might prove profitable. His mother often expostulated with him, but in vain. At length, having run through the fortune he had inherited, and unable to make both ends meet, he left home without the knowledge of his own people, in search of adventures. For three years he was absent, and his mother and wife fretted away. Separation from him was not the only source of their trouble. They were extremely poor. Shankha's creditors ousted them from their home, and they lived in a hut, the husking of rice for others being their chief means of subsistence.
One day a heron came to the hut and told the mother that a prince, named Mohun, was shooting birds on the side of the nearest lake, and that he could tell her where her son was. She ran to the prince, and hearing that Shankha was on the other side of the lake, ran to meet him. Shankha was in a reclining posture on the ground, with two flutes lying by him,
- ↑ A conch-shell.
