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at the face of the princess with the eyes of a commoner and draw her likeness. His special skill lay in the fact that he could draw a complete picture of a person without missing any of the likeness merely by seeing any small part of the body of that person. During his visits to the art gallery, his eyes once fell on a toe of princess Malli who was standing behind a curtain. That much was quite enough for him to draw and complete the entire picture of Malli. But Malladatta would not listen and thus the painter had to leave Mithila and wander away as an exile. The king of Hastinapura looked at the picture that the painter had brought along with him and was so much overwhelmed by the beauty of princess Malli that he sent an urgent message to the king of Mithila expressing his desire to marry the princess.
In the country of the Pañcalas, king Jitastru ruled. Once he had a visitor who was a nun Coksa by name, who said she came from the city of Mithila. She was a great scholar in the Vedic lore and she often held religious discourses in assemblies of kings, noblemen, rich merchants etc. Once when she went to king Kumbhaka, she was taken to meet princess Malli and started explaining to her the basic principle of her religion which was purity. But Malli appeared to be well informed and embarrassed her by many questions. She asked her how was it possible to live a clean and pure life in a world which was full of false faith and indulged in doing injury to other living beings. "Wasn't it like washing clean a blood stained garment with blood itself?" The nun could not answer the question. She merely kept quiet and the numerous slave girls of Malli laughed at her discomfiture and showed her out of the palace. The nun quickly left Mithila and arrived at the principal city of the Pañcalas. Jitasatru who was extremely proud of the host of beautiful women that he had in his harem, asked the nun whether she had, in the course of her visits to various places, including the palaces of kings and mansions of noblemen, noticed any one more beautiful than any of the women that he had with him. The nun Coksa put on a sarcastic smile and said to the king, "You are really like the frog in the well." The king asked what frog she was referring to and in what well?" The nun replied, "There was once a frog in a well where it was born and brought up and it had no occasion to
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