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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(SEPTEMBER, 1691.
service to us in our old age P That was a mild way of saying that his life would be a short one! I did not like to wound a mother's heart with so terrible a statement. Only eighteen years are given to our Atirûpa in his horoscope ; and, already, the sixteenth year is drawing to a close. He has only two years more to live, and then we shall lose him. The thought of this and of the vast amount of rare knowledge that he has acquired brought this sorrow upon me. What child of an astrologer has ever before, in his sixteenth year, so clearly foreseen the fortunes of the king of the country? Is it because the life of our Atirupa was made so short that God gave him such superior intellectual powers ? O ye gods, how cruel you are towards your own creatures !"
Thus ended the old man, unable to proceed further, and choking with his sorrow. His wife fell to the ground, like a tree cut at the root, and the boy perceived that he was the cause of all this misery of his parents. He consoled them by degrees, and cheered them up, asking his father for his horoscope. He then began to examine it minutely before his anxious parents, and at last pronounced it to have been wrongly cast, for certain reasons. His arguments were so cogent and persuasive that Satyavâk, too, began to waver in his opinion. Atirupa, seizing the opportunity, clearly proved to his father that he would live for a full century; that the horoscope must say so if it had been rigbtly cast; and that all this trouble had occurred owing to its having been wrongly cast. He then corrected and re-wrote his horoscope with very sound arguments for such corrections, and made his father believe beyond doubt that his son was to live for a hundred years, and not to meet his death in his eighteenth year. His mother, too, was pretty nearly satisfied, and, thus, in a few ghafikás, after a great deal of trouble on the part of Atirûpa, peace was restored to the minds of his parents, and everything went on as usual.
Now this was all a trick of Atirapa. Finding that his parents were dispirited on his account, he had, for the nonce, invented a lie; for the moment that Atirupa saw his horoscope he was more than convinced that death was inevitable in his eighteenth year. But, fresh from his studies, and actuated with the motive of calming the feelings of his parents, he had boldly, by reason of his minute knowledge, brought forth arguments to falsify his horoscope, and his doting father, who had wavered in his belief, readily took in what he had said.
Although his parents fully believed in what Atirûpa had said, he was ill at ease in his mind. He had really the greatest regard for his father, and extreme confidence in bis predictions and state. ments. Knowledge is one for all. The same principles which had told Satyavâk that Atirupa was not to live for more than eighteen years, indicated to his son also tbat his life current ran only up to that point.
His life, then, in the world, was only to be for two years more, but meanwhile he had a strong desire to perform a pilgrimage to Banaras to perform the prescribed religious rites for his parents, and he knew very well that, if he spoke about it to his father, he would be the last person to give him permission. He hardly knew how to act, and, in order not to arouse any suspicions by doing things hastily, he waited for six months more, and spent that period most happily with his old and affectionate parents.
One day, as Atirûpa was sitting in the verandah of the house, he thought to himself as follows: “Ever since I expounded my horoscope, my old father believes that I shall live fully a hundred years. But I know for certain, if astrology is a science at all, that I shall die in a year and a half. Wherever I go this must happen. I cannot avoid it. If I remain at home and die here, my parents must also die broken-hearted, but if I run away from home they, who are still under the illusion that I shall live for a hundred years, will anxiously await my return, and die & natural death. For I am certain that I shall soon depart to a place from which no one has ever returned. It is much better to put them to a little trouble and anxiety now and fly from home, than to stay behind and die in their presence, and thus be the cause of their death for grief for me. I shall not run away in pain either, for I shall proceed to Banaras, and there
