With this intent the king and his courtiers accompanied the Sramanaka to his cell, which he entered, and closed the door. After some delay, the general asked the king when they would see him again. The king answered, ‘Have patience, on these occasions the sage quits his earthly body and assumes an ethereal form in which alone he can enter Indra’s heaven.’ ‘If this be the case,’ said the general, ‘let us burn his cell, and thus prevent his reassuming his earthly body; your majesty will then have constantly an angelic person in your presence.’ To reconcile the king to this mode of proceeding the general tells him a story which has reference to the serpent, or Nâga tribes of ancient India. ‘A Brahman named Devasarman had no child, which denial made his wife miserable. At length, however, owing to some mystic words, a son is promised, but what was the surprise of the mother, and the horror of the attendants, when the child so eagerly desired proved to be a snake. ‘The assistants wished to destroy the monster, but maternal affection prevailed, and the snake was reared with all possible care and affection. ‘At the proper age the mother entreated her husband to provide a suitable wife for their son. He said he would if he could gain admission to Patâla, where Vasuki, the Serpent King, reigns over the Nâgas, and might grant such a request. ‘But his wife was so distressed that to divert her thoughts he consented to travel. After some months they arrived at a city in which a Brahman offered his own beautiful daughter as a wife for the serpent. ‘The girl consented to the marriage and performed her duties admirably. After a time her serpent-husband changed one night into a man, intending in the morning to reassume his serpent form: but the girl’s father discovering that the snake body was abandoned, seized the deserted skin and threw it into the fire. ‘The consequence of which was, that his son-in law ever remained in the figure of a man, to the pride of his parents, and the happiness of his wife.’ After hearing this narrative the king no longer hesitated. The mendicant’s cell was set on fire; the mendicant perished in the flames, and the king was as his general desired, released from the thraldom of a cunning ascetic.[2] Footnote 2: From ‘Ancient and Mediæval India.’—_Manning._ When Swami was a boy, his youthful imagination was fired by these ancient Hindu stories, but the one which tended most directly in forming his ambition, giving him the desire to become a mind-reader, was the following, taken from the ‘Vetala-Panchavinasati;’ or, ‘Twenty-five Tales told by a Vetâl.’ A Vetâl may be the spirit of a deceased person, or that of a living person who enters the body of another, leaving its own, and taking possession of that of a corpse.