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Life and Stories of Pārçvanātha
vega, who told him that a Sage had predicted that the conqueror of Asitākşa would become the husband of his eight daughters. Sanatkumāra married the eight. Later on he freed a captive princess, Sunandā from the thrall of a Vidyādhara, named Vajravega, and married both her, as well as Sandhyāvalī, the sister of that Vidyadhara. After that he engaged in a great conflict with the Vidyādhara king Açanivega, slew him, and wrested from him his royal fortune. He married yet a hundred more Vidyādhara maidens, and thus accumulated 110 wives (1168). After that he went to his native city of Hastināgapura, and ruled there as Cakrin, or emperor (1175).
At that time a god, named Samgama, came from the heaven of Icāna to the court of Indra in the Sāudharma heaven. Samgama's lustre outshone the gods there, as the sun outshines the moon and the stars. The gods asked Indra, whether there existed any other god as lustrous as he, and Indra answered, that Sanatkumāra in Hastināgapura outshone even the gods. The two gods, Vijaya and Vāijayanta, went to the presence of Sanatkumāra,62 while he was engaged in anointing himself, and found that his beauty exceeded even Indra's description. Sanatkumāra bade them wait, went to make an elaborate toilet, and then exhibited himself once more in all his still greater royal splendor. But then they appeared dejected and said: ' Alas, that all this perfection of beauty, brilliance, and youth of men should be seen one moment, and then vanish!' They went away. The emperor, in astonishment, looked at his bedizened two arms, and found that they had grown dim; looked upon his breast, hung with necklaces, and saw that it had become unbeautiful.
* cf. for this part of the story, Leumann, Die Avacyaka-Erzählungen, pp. 34-36, in the Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. X, nr. 2. For Western parallels see J. J. Meyer, Hindu Tales, p. 88, note.
