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CHAPTER SIX
With you as a wishing-tree, there is no poverty. There is no cause whatever of pain to any one among the people. Nevertheless, this has happened to me only, an ascetic.
! The inevitability of death (90–155)
There is here a large country, Avanti by name, resembling heaven, charming with irreproachable cities, gardens, rivers, etc. In it there is a village, named Aśvabhadra, like a tilaka on the earth, fair with large pools, wells, tanks, and various groves. I am an inhabitant of this village, devoted to the study of the Vedas, constantly maintaining the sacrificial fire, coming from a pure Brāhman family.
One day I entrusted my son, dearer than life, to my wife and went to another village to study different sciences. Next day while I was studying there, anxiety arose in me. I was troubled, thinking, This is a very bad omen.' Terrified by this bad omen, I returned to my own village, like a well-bred horse to the stable formerly occupied. From afar I saw my own house deprived of beauty. While I reflected for a long time, 'Why is this ? ' my left eye twitched rapidly, and a crow lighted on a dry tree and croaked loudly. Wounded in the heart by unfavorable omens such as these like arrows, bereft of mind, I entered the house like a man of straw. When my wife saw me rushing forward, her hair disheveled, crying at once, 'Oh! my son ! Oh ! my son !' she fell to the ground. Thinking My son is certainly dead,' I also fell to the ground at once, like a dead man. At the end of the swoon, again lamenting pitiably, I saw in the house my son bitten by a snake.
While I stayed awake at night without eating, etc., the family-deity announced to me, "Sir, why are you so crushed by the death of your son ? I will restore your son, if you follow my instructions. I said, “The command of the goddess is authority. For what is not promised for the sake of a son by those miserable with grief ? The family-deity said, 'Bring quickly fire from an auspicious house where no one has died.'
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