My slave, then will I sell thee as a slave To the Cha.n.dâla." Then, filled with delight, Paying the money, the Švapâka bound His lately-purchased slave, and striking him, Led hill away. Parted from all his friends; In utmost grief; in the Cha.n.dâla's house Abiding--morning, noon, and eventide, And night, the king thus made lament: "Alas! my tender wife, overwhelmed with pain, Looking upon her son in misery, Bewails her lot. But yet she says: 'The king Will surely ransom us, for he has gained By now more money than the Brâhman paid For us;' and all the time she little knows My fate--worse than her own. For I have passed From woe to woe--kingdom and friends--my wife, My son, have passed from me, and now the state Of a Cha.n.dâla holds me." While he dwelt A slave in the Cha.n.dâla's house, the forms Of those he loved were still before his eyes-- Were ever in his mind. Meanwhile the king, Obedient to his master's will, became A robber of the dead; and night and day He watched for plunder. "One part of the spoil Is for the king, three for thy master, two For thee. Go to the city's southern part, Where is the dwelling of the dead, there wait." Obeying the Cha.n.dâla, to the place Of burial he went;--an awful place, Filled full of fearful sounds and loathsome sights-- Of evil smells, and smoke, and locks of hair Fallen from the dead; while troops of fiends and ghouls, Vampires and demons, wandered to and fro. Vultures and jackals prowled, and spirit forms' Of evil hovered o'er. The ground was strewn With heaps of bones; and wailing, sharp and shrill, Re-echoed from the mourners of the dead. The bodies on the funeral piles, half burnt, Crackled and hissed; showing their shining teeth, They grinned, as if in sport; while all the time The howl of demons and the wail of fiends Were mingled with the roar of flames--a sound Of fearful import, such as ushers in The day of doom. The sights, and sounds, and smells-- The heaps of ashes, and the piles of bones, Blackened with filth--the smoke, the shouts, The yells--struck fear on fear into the heart. The burial-place resembled nought but hell. Such was the place appointed for the king. "Priests! Brâhmans! Counsellors! how have I fallen From all my royal state! Alas! my queen! Alas! my son! Oh! miserable fate! We have been torn asunder by the power Of Višvâmitra." Thoughts like these possessed His inmost mind; while foul, unshorn, unwashed, He served his master. Running here and there, Armed with a jagged club, he sought the dead, From whom he gained his wages. So he lived, Degraded from his caste. Old knotted rags Served as his dress; his face and arms and feet With dust and ashes from the funeral piles Begrimed; his hands defiled with putrid flesh From contact with the bodies of the dead. So neither day nor night he ceased from toil.