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36
CHAPTER ONE
"Ašvagrīva, the conqueror of the world, the Indra of the world, commands you by my voice: 'This girl, suitable for us, has been taken by you from ignorance, like the fruit of a tree in the royal garden by a traveler by mistake. I am your lord and your relatives' lord. You have been protected by me for a long time. Therefore, give up the girl. The command of the master is authority for servants.''
Then Triprstha, his forehead terrible with a monstrous frown, brilliant with red eyes and cheeks, said to him: “Your lord promulgates law in this way, as if he were the chief of the people. Alas for his family dignity! I think all the high-born maidens in his own territory have been destroyed by him. Does milk survive in the presence of a kitten? Pray, whence and how does he have lordship over us ? His lordship elsewhere also will soon be fleeting. If he has had enough of life as well as eating rice, let him come here himself to take Svayamprabhā. You are not to be killed because you are a messenger. Go! Do not stay now! I shall certainly kill him, Hayagriva, if he comes here.'
So answered by Vişnu, the messenger went quickly, as if struck by a goad, and told everything to King Ašvagrīva. When he heard that, Hayagriva, his eyes inflamed, his hair and beard twitching, biting his lip with his teeth, his body trembling, his forehead dreadful with a terrifying frown, thus instructed the best of his Vidyādharas with contempt and anger:
"Oh, fate has surely given feeble wit to Agnijațin, who would be in my presence like a chameleon compared with the sun.61 What kind of nobility has one who, ignoring me, married his daughter to the son of the husband of his own daughter ? 62 Now Jvalanajațin, one fool eager to die; Prajāpati, a second; the son of his half-sister, another;
51 519. The point is in the abhimukha and another name for the krkalāsa, i.e., pratisūrya. Abhi. 4. 365.
52 520. Triprstha's mother was his half-sister.
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