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CHAPTER ONE sons mounted horses held by Dhanu, resembling the Sri of Revanta. The horses went in the fifth gait 313 for fifty yojanas like a kos; then, broken in wind, died. Then, intent on saving their lives, they went on foot with great difficulty to the vicinity of a village named Kostaka.
Brahmadatta said, “Friend Varadhạnu, now hunger and thirst torment me, as if in rivalry with each other.” “Wait here a moment,” the minister's son said and summoned the barber from the village because of a wish for a haiệout. From the advice of the minister's son, Brahman's son had a haircut then and there and wore only a top-knot. He put on pure reddish garments and had the appearance of a newly-risen sun covered by a twilight cloud. He wore a sacred thread placed around his neck by Varadhanu and Brahman's son bore a resemblance to a Brāhman's son. The minister's son covered Brahmadatta's breast, which was marked with a śrīvatsa, with a cloth, like the sun by a monsoon-cloud. In this way Brahman's son made a change of clothes like a stage-manager and the minister's son did the same, like an assistant stagemanager. Then they entered the village like the full moon and sun.
They were invited for food by an important Brāhman. He fed them with devotion suitable to a king. Generally entertainment is in accordance with prestige. The Brāhman's wife, throwing unhusked rice on the prince's head, brought forth a pair of white garments and a maiden who was equal to an Apsaras. Then Varadhanu said, “ Foolish woman, why do you tie her to the neck of this young Brāhman, unskilled in arts, like a cow to the neck of a bulỊ ? ” Then the important Brāhman said: “ This is my daughter, Bandhumati, fair with virtues. There is no other husband for her except him. 'Her husband will be lord of the six-part world,' astrologers told me. This very man is certainly he. They told me,
313 169. The Abhi. 4. 312-315 enumerates the 5 gaits of a horse. See I, n. 304. But none seems to be a gait of great speed, certainly not the fifth. ļn III, pp. 173, 179, the horse ușed the fifth gait in inverted training,
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