________________
Story of the Emperor Suvarnabāhu
105
charms of Nāgas, Vidyādharas, and immortal women. While engaged in this thought, the maiden and a companion entered a bower of flowers. There she began to sprinkle a bakula-tree with her mouth, to the delight of its blossoms.? Ravished by her charms, the king reflected that she could not be an ordinary hermitage servitor, but must be of royal descent (39). Now a bee flew into the face of the maiden. She asked her companion to protect her, but received the reply, that this was King Suvarņabāhu's business. Then the king showed himself, and asked who dared to injure her, while the son of Vajrabāhu was protector of the earth. The maidens remained silent. When the king again asked whether anything was disturbing their pious practices, the friend found courage to say, that during Suvarnabāhu's rulership no one could do so; that a bee merely had disturbed her friend (47). Then she asked him who he was. Unwilling to declare himself, he pretended to belong to the king's retinue, commissioned by the king to protect the hermitage from intrusion. But the maiden knew him to be the king himself (52).
The king then asked who her mistress was. With a sigh she replied that her name was Padmā, the daughter of Ratnāvali, the wife of the Vidyādhara king of Ratnapura. At his death his sons had quarreled, the kingdom had been distracted; therefore Ratnāvalī had taken her young daughter to that hermitage, whose abbot was Ratnāvali's brother Gālava (55). A soothsayer had
"Just as the acoka tree blossoms when touched by the foot of a young and lovely woman, so does the bakula tree blossom when sprinkled by the mouth of lovely femininity. The kadamba blossoms with the roar of the thunder. And day and night lotuses open their calyxes to the rays of sun and moon,
See p. 16.
