________________
lan
CONTIENTS.
(6. BEAVA.
side of plank. She soon recovered under my treatment and let me lead her to our hermitage, but remained silent all the time. As our senior is endowed with superhuman knowledge, 1 applied to him for information about her. “She is, he told me, princess Vilāsavati and had fallen in love with Sanatkumāra. Upon hearing that her lover had been put to death, she left the palace during the night in search of his corpse to have one more look at him and die afterwards. But she was captured by robbers; they stripped her of her jewels and sold her to a merchant who was about to sail for Varvarakūla. The ship, however, foundered in a storm, but she got on a plank and was saved. She will soon be united with her lover." This prediction of our senior which I related to her, apparently comforted her. But once, when she had been out to gather flowers and fuel, she returned greatly changed, and grew worse every day. No doubt she was desperately in love. I watched her the next day 'going out with her basket to cull flowers, and followed her to the place where the flowers grow. Standing behind a group of plaintains I heard her invoking, itt tears, the sylvain gods. “ This is the spot where I met my lover to whose questions I returned no answer; for I was unable to speak from bashfulness and from doubt whether he was the real Sanatkumāra, or produced by my imagination, or some uncamy being who mocked me in his guise. At any rate I cannot endure life any longer." She then proceeded to hang herself from a tree. I was just in time to save her, and expostulating with her upon her want of confidence in me, returned with her to the hermitage. In vain I made the Tāpasa boyu search for you; at last I went myself, and now I have met you. 347, 17.
We then went together to the hermitage. There I saw Vilásavatı lying on a couch which she left to abscond in the interior. But afterwards she came to wash my feet. I was made welcome by the Tāpasar, and the old nun delivered to me my bride. After the marriage ceremony was gone through, we went
1 This is apparently in contradition with the preceding part, (p. 344 1 11-348 1 2, from jæva lao down to saya hoi) which is probably a later addition by a sentimental reader.
