Kathakoca or Treasury of Stories

Author(s): C H Tawney
Publisher: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation New Delhi

Page 55

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hollow. When Nágadatta went on to the ship, a man there, who wished to commit suicide by starvation,* was restrained by Nágadatta, who taught him the formula of adoration. Now, five hundred parrots, who were natives of Suvarnadvípa, were residing in that place by order of their king, Sundara, in order to succour others. Whenever any one falls into a difficulty, they inform the king, and the king tries to devise a method for removing that difficulty. So one day Nágadatta fastened a letter to the foot of a parrot. The king, as soon as he read the story told in the letter, was unable to eat. He sent a crier with a drum round the city. A certain pilot who lived there touchedt the drum, and said: 'I will, by means of an artifice, drive the ships out of the hollow of the snake-encircled mountain into the open sea.' The king gave him, by way of hire for his services, a lakh of gold pieces. The pilot embarked on a ship and went to the opening of the hole in the snake-encircled mountain, and said to Nágadatta : *If one of you will do a daring deed, the ships will come out. Nágadatta said to the old pilot : 'What is the nature of the daring deed ?' The pilot replied : On the top of this mountain there is, in a palace of precious stones, an image of the lord Nemi, made out of a sapphire. In that palace are gongs of not great size. If anyone climbs up this banyan-tree and sounds the gongs, crores of bhárunda birds will fly up, terrified by the sound of the gongs; the wind produced by the fanning of their wings will make the ships proceed on their way.' When the pilot said this, Nágadatta said: 'I will give a lakh of gold pieces to who
* I have slightly altered the order of the words in the original.
† Chhibitah. The word is properly chhivitah, as Dr. Hoernle points out. It comes from chhivaispricati.Hemachandra's Grammar' (ed. Pischel), iv. 182. I owe this reference to Dr. Hoernle.
If the word 'no' were omitted the sense would be improved. $ For enormous birds see the note on p. 221 of the first volume of my translation of the 'Katha Sarit Ságara,' and the additional note on p. 630 of vol. ii. Some ships are released in this way in the 'Çatrun. jaya Mahatmyam.' (See p. 31.) The Çatrunjaya' story is probably cannected with the first part of Der geraubte Schleier (Kaden, Unter den Olivenbäumen,' p. 107). The jewel-collector is abandoned in both stories, in the Indian in a pit, in the European on a mountain.