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returned to his own cloister, and said to his pupils : 'Hear, pupils : to-day the holy goddess Gangá has brought from the Himálaya mountain a wooden box full of instruments of worship, in order to ensure the success of my spells. You must go to the lower bathing-place and bring that wooden box. You must not open it. If you open it, the success of my spells will be impeded. The pupils thought : Oh, the excellence of our abbot !' and all the pupils were beside themselves with wonder. Then the abbot said : That bathing-place is two kos distant.' Then the pupils started. In the meanwhile that wooden box had been seen by King Subhíma, the lord of that city, while amusing himself in the river. Being full of curiosity, he took possession of it and opened it, and saw the two maidens.* When the king saw the beauty of the maidens, he was over head and ears in love, and said to the minister: 'Oh minister, behold & marvel : for ««• Are they maidens of Pátála, or daughters of Vidyádbaras,
Or nymphs of heaven, or cl The king asked one of the maidens who they were, but they answered not a word. Then his friend, perceiving the king's wish, said : King, no one abandons maidens thus adorned without a reason; so you may be sure that someone has put these maidens into the Ganges as victims, in order to attain some object. So let the king put another pair in their place and take them.' Another said: 'Put a pair of females.' So they brought a couple of female apes from the wood and put them into the box, and sealed it up as before. Then the wooden box was sent floating down the stream of the Ganges, and the king returned to his town in high spirits. The king went on attending to the affairs of his kingdom. Now, it happened that those pupils of the ascetic, wandering along the bank, as fate would have it, after a long time found the wooden box, and quickly took it and made it over to the ascetic. The ascetic
* A similar incident will be found on p. 220 of Kaden's . Unter den Olivenbäumen.' A king finds two maidens set afloat in a box. In the twenty-second story of Basile's Pentamerone'a king marries & maiden whom he finds floating about on the sea in a box.
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