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p. 598-614.)
CONTEXTS.
In Sankbapura there livod King Sankhayana and his wife Kantimatt. Their danghter Ratnavati was so beautiful and.. accomplished, that her mother doubted if any man could match her. She, therefore, sent out clever men everywhere to take the likeness of any prince whom they might think worthy of Ratnavati, and secure & proof of his proficienoy in arts. Two of these men, Citramati and Bhūsaņa, beheld Gunacandra in a park practising with the bow. They made no doubt that he ought to become Ratnavati's husband; but they were not able to take his portrait after seeing him only once and for a short time only. They, therefore, requested the honour of waiting on him under the pretence of being painters. Admitted to his presence they produced a portrait of Ratnavati, which the prince greatly admired as a piece of fine painting. However they said, there was not much art in the picture ; it was the beauty of the original which gave it its value; and then they told him whom the picture represented. The prince instantly fell in love with one whose likeness only he had seen ; but dissembling his com. motion he changed the subject of the conversation and asked his friend Vist;tabuddhi to propone a Praśnottara (a kind of riddlo); which the prince solved at once. Now Bhūsaņa proposed & Pragnottara of his own, and after him Citramati another, both of which had to be repeated before the prince was able to solve them. 612, 8. To reward them for their clever compositions, the prince ordered his treasurer Dhanadeva to pay them a lakh of dināras. Dhanadeva thought that the cause of the prince's lavishness was his ignorance of the enormous greatness of a lakh. In order to make him more considerate for the future, he countod the dināras down in the presence of the prince, and told him that this was the lakh of dinaras which he was pleased to present to the painters. But the prince guessed the treasurer's meaning; in order to make himy understand that the rightminded regard money but as drosa, he said that one lakh was not enough for both men and ordered him to pay them another lakh.' 614, 7.
A similar story is told about Neru by Johannes Zonaraw, spitorno historiarum XI 12. Noro had ordered 2,000,000 silver coins to be paid to
