Sheet, whom we left reigning in his strangely acquired kingdom. Hearing the particulars of the above Sayambara, he was fired with rage at the presumption of a woman to enslave kings and princes for having failed in an impossible task; and to make an example of her, he invaded her father's kingdom and carried her away captive.
Basanta, meanwhile, lived in the hermitage, ignorant of these events. His life was that of a contented recluse; his companions being the hermit and a pair of parrots, which the latter had tamed. No care vexed him till one night when he overheard the male parrot talking thus to his mate:—"A princess, Rupamoti by name, is in want of a lover. But she has vowed to give her hand to none but to him who shall bring her Gajamutty, the pearls that grow in the heads of elephants." The female parrot asked where they could be found, and her mate said in reply, "There is in a certain place a mountain, with its summit perpetually covered with snow; and there is the sea of cream, in so much repute among men, washing its base. The unrivalled beams of Gajamutty fall upon the cream, and the aspirant for the girl's favour must make himself master of these pearls." Basanta, fired by curiosity and a passion for Rupamoti, whom he had never seen and of whom he had just now heard for the first time, went to the parrots, and said that he would get the pearls. The birds lauded his courage, and instructed him to undertake the expedition dressed in the princely robes to be found at the top of the Shimul[1] tree standing near, and with the hermit's sacred trident in his hand. He got the robes down from the tree, and the trident from his spiritual teacher, and set out in search of the snow-clad mountain. Great were the obstacles that he met by the way, and the impediments that he had to surmount in reaching his destination, which he finally did in twelve years and thirteen days. His robe and the trident had a magical power which enabled him to reach the top of the mountain. From the summit he looked out over the sea of
- ↑ A big thorny tree, with very red but scentless flowers.
