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CHAPTER TEN With this resolution, Vişņu left; and said to his own marriageable daughters who had come to bow, “Will you be mistresses or slaves ?” They told śārngin, “We will be mistresses,” and Sārngin said, “In that case take initiation under Nemi, innocent girls.” So he made his daughters, suitable for marriage, become mendicants in turn.
One day one queen said to her daughter Ketumañjarī, “Asked by your father, child, say unhesitatingly, 'I will be a slave, not a mistress, lord.'” When she was suitable for marriage, she went into her father's presence, sent by her mother. She was asked in the same way by her father and she replied as instructed by her mother.
Kșsna thought: “My daughters will wander in the forest of existence and they will experience disrespect everywhere. That is not suitable. Let it be so that others do not say this.” With this thought, Hari said to the weaver Vīra, “ Have you done anything unusual ?” He said, “I have done nothing unusual," and Hari said to him, “Nevertheless, consider and tell something."
Vīra said: “In the past I made a lizard in a jujube fall down, hitting it with a stone, and it died. Water, flowing on the road in the track made by a chariot-wheel, was held back by me stepping in it with my left foot and it flowed far away. Flies that had entered a jar of sizing,276 buzzing, were kept imprisoned for a long time by me placing my left hand over the opening."
On the next day in the council Kșşņa said to the kings, “Sirs, the conduct of Viraka is not in accordance with his family." They, saying, “ Long live!” began to listen attentively and again Krşņa said to them: “This weaver is a kșatriya by whom a red-hooded serpent living in a grove of jujubes was killed with a weapon from the ground. This weaver is a kșatriya by whom the Gangā, carrying dirty water
276 224. Pāta must be corrected to pāna in accordance with the MSS and 235 below, but ' sizing' is a conjecture. It would be suitable for a weaver to have a jar of sizing.
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