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most indubitably false. For instance, I possess all kinds of enjoyments; if I find the same in a foreign land, I will acknowledge that this speech is true.' Having gone through these reflections, he summoned his minister, and after deliberating with him, he went to the city of King Támracháda, a hundred yojanas off. When the king entered that city, he thought: 'A handsome man, wearing splendid clothes, meets with respect everywhere. For this reason he took the form of a deformed man, with both his eyes streaming, with his nose gone, and his two lips fallen away. To cut the story short, he was excessively repulsive, impossible to look at. Such he becama. At this moment King Támrachúða, seated in a seven-storied palace, was looking at the beauty of the city. Near him, for the purpose of doing him honour, were seated the nobles, the chief feudatories, the secretaries, the paymasters, and the other courtiers. Then the king, puffed up with the importance of his own kingdom, said: You courtiers, by whose favour do you enjoy such a fortune of rule?' They said to the king, with servile complaisance : 'King, all this springs from your favour.' Then the princess, whose name was Madanamanjarí, when she heard those feudatories and other courtiers say this, laughed a little, and then remained silent.* The king asked his daughter the reason of her laughing. saying: 'My darling, what is this ? His daughter answered: 'My father, these servants of yours said what is not true; for that reason I laughed.' The king said: 'My dear, what is untrue ? She answered: Their assertion that their happiness springs from your favour; that is untrue.' The king asked his daughter: "Then, my dear, what is true ?! She said: 'Every man fares according to his own actions. When the king heard this speech of his daughter in the audience-ball, he flew into a passion, and calling his
* Madanamanjari reminds one, to a certain extent, of Cordelia. See also Kaden, · Unter den Olivenbäumen.' In the story headed • Wasser und Salz,' a daughter tells her father the king that she loves him like water and salt, and he orders her to be slain. When she is happily married to a prince, he acknowledges that she was in the right.
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