Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 199

ŚREŅIKA, MEGHAKUMĀRA AND NANDISENA
159
Many sons of mine have been destroyed by that wretch; but now I will save my son by some device.
66
With this determination, the cow-elephant pretended to have a foot pierced by a thorn and walked very, very slowly, fraudulently lame. Thinking, "She must not be enjoyed by any other lord of a herd, the lord of the herd guarded the cow, roaming very little. The cow-elephant, who had become extremely slow in gait, joined the elephant for a watch, or a half watch, or for a day or two. Thinking, This poor creature, disabled as she is, does join me at last," the elephant became over-confident. Who is not deceived by the crafty?
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One day when the lord of the herd was far away, the cowelephant put a bunch of straw on her head and went to a hermitage. Falling at their feet, the bunch of straw on her head, she was recognized by the ascetics as a poor creature who was seeking protection. They told her, "Be comforted, child, and she remained comfortably in their hermitage, like a maiden in her father's house.
39
One day after her son was born, she left her son in that hermitage, but she herself went back to the herd in the forest as before. For some time she came frequently and nursed the young elephant and he grew up gradually like a tree of the hermitage. The ascetics fed him from affection, as if he were their own child, with mouthfuls of cooked rice and olibanum. 162 He sat on his haunches and with his trunk made a high crown of twisted hair on his head, playing at the side of the ascetics. The ascetics sprinkled their trees with watering-pots and he, observing them, filled his trunk with water repeatedly and sprinkled. The ascetics gave him the name Secanaka (Sprinkler), because he sprinkled the trees of the hermitage daily in this way. With curved tusks joined to the trunk, with eyes yellow as honey, with the tip of the trunk touching the ground, with high withers, with a high boss, a short neck,
162 334. Emend to sallaki, another name of which is gajapriya, ' dear to elephants. Abhi. 4. 218.