Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

SR No.: 001609
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 566
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Story, Literature, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

Page 48

2. SINOPŠIS OF YAŠASTILAKA
29 b) The relative merits of fate and personal endeavour form the subject of an academical discussion in the council-chamber, in which the ministers maintain different points-of-view, and the deliberation ends with a discourse on the principles which ought to govern the relations of a king with other kings.
c) An arrogant message in verse summoning rival princes to accept the suzerainty of Yasodhara is read out to the envoy in charge of the mission by the royal clerk under the king's direction.
d) The chief of the secret police reports to Yasodhara that the spy Sankhanaka has returned after gathering information about various people in the country and abroad. Yasodhara summons the spy to his presence and speuds some time, jesting with him. Questioned by the king about the absence of his former corpulence, Sankhanaka replies that poor men like himself can hardly expect to have protuberant bellies. It is, of course, otherwise with men like Yasodhara and the idle rich, who daily gorge
emselves with luxurious food, such as rice white and clear like the glances of beautiful women; broths of the colour gold; butter fragrant as the mouth of a beloved woman; curries charming as the graceful movements of nautch girls; well-cooked dishes, savoury like a beloved woman's lips; curds wellshaped and hard like the breasts of a young woman; milk sweet as the glances of one's beloved; sugаred preparations of milk-rice, delicious as the first union with a newly-married bride; and water perfumed with camphor, refreshing as the mysteries of love!
Addressed by the king as the lord of the rams,' and asked whether he has had anything to eat, Sankhanaka replies that he has been in a way entertained by a miserly, penniless and greedy fellow named Kiliñjaka, the righthand man of the Chief of the Secret Agents, Viśvāvasu, a native of the Deccan. The meal consisted of boiled rice grown stale, and full of husk and gravel; some rotten beans; a few drops of rancid Atasi oil; slices of half-cooked gourds and certain badly cooked vegetables as well as some raw fruits and overburnt brinjals thrown in. The meal ended with sour gruel mixed with plenty of mustards, and the beverage was some alkaline fluid with a taste like that of the water of a salt-mine. Sankhanaka pitifully relates that he could eat nothing and remained hungry; and his only subsistence was a quantity of boiled Syāmāka rice mixed with whey, which the miser's wife had the goodness to serve, unseen by her husband.
Yasodhara once asked the spy for particulars about a minister named Pāmarodāra, entrusted with the administration of a province, and famous for his piety, wisdom and spotlegs character. This brings us to what may bo termed a detailed report of the spy on the doings of the minister.