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TWELFTH INCARNATION AS SĀNTI 329 time by her parents who are ignorant of a suitable union, without hope of marrying me, yet unmarried, she will die. Therefore, by dying before she does I shall have my grief allayed. Who will hear of the death of his sweetheart like a blister on a burned man?'
After these reflections, after putting a noose around his neck, Vasanta tied himself like a quiver to the top of an aśoka. When the noose had just been tied, a man ran up from an arbor, saying, 'Do not do anything rash, sir ! Do not !? Climbing the aśoka, he cut the knot of the noose and said, 'Why has a distressing thing of this kind taken place?' Vasanta said, Why are you disturbed by this appearance of me, afflicted by fate, resembling an indravāruņa, 872 sir ? Why did you, by cutting the noose, put an obstacle in my way when I wished to die, which would have ended grief at separation from my sweetheart?'.
Then Vasanta told him, when he enquired, the story of his sweetheart. For grief generally subsides from being told. The man said: 'Even if this is the case, nevertheless it is not fitting for a discerning man to give up life. Stratagems, rather, to obtain the desired objectives are fitting. In this affair of yours, they exist. So do not die like an animal. Even in an affair in which there is no stratagem (available), it is not suitable to die. A dead man does not obtain it; he goes to the state of existence suitable to his karma. I live wandering about, because the desired object could not be attained because of the lack of a stratagem. For a living man sees fair things.
I am a resident of Kfttikāpura, named Kāmapāla. I went away with a desire to see foreign countries,
872 451. The point to this comparison is explained in M.C., s.v. indrāvana, the bitter gourd, Cucumis colocynthus. “As this gourd, though beautiful, in appearance, is of bitter taste, a handsome but worthless person, or a person meek-looking but ferocious or rancorous at heart, is called indravāna."
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