On the bank of the Ganges there is a city named Mákandiká; in that city long ago there was a certain ascetic who observed a vow of silence, and he lived on alms, and surrounded by numerous other holy beggars, dwelt in a monastery within the precincts of a god's temple where he had taken up his abode. Once, when he entered a certain merchant's house to beg, he saw a beautiful maiden coming out with alms in her hand, and the rascal seeing that she was wonderfully beautiful was smitten with love and exclaimed "Ah! Ah! Alas!" And that merchant overheard him. Then taking the alms he had received, he departed to his own house; and then the merchant went there and said to him in his astonishment,--"Why did you to-day suddenly break your vow of silence and say what you did?" When he heard that, the ascetic said to the merchant--"This daughter of yours has inauspicious marks; when she marries, you will undoubtedly perish, wife, sons, and all. So, when I saw her, I was afflicted, for you are my devoted adherent; and thus it was on your account that I broke silence and said what I did. So place this daughter of yours by night in a basket, on the top of which there must be a light, and set her adrift on the Ganges." The merchant said, "So I will," and went away, and at night he did all he had been directed to do out of pure fear. The timid are ever unreflecting. The hermit for his part said at that time to his own pupils, "Go to the Ganges, and when you see a basket floating along with a light on the top of it, bring it here secretly, but you must not open it, even if you hear a noise inside." They said, "We will do so," and off they went; but before they reached the Ganges, strange to say, a certain prince went into the river to bathe. He seeing that basket, which the merchant had thrown in, by the help of the light on it, got his servants to fetch it for him, and immediately opened it out of curiosity. And in it he saw that heart-enchanting girl, and he married her on the spot by the Gándharva ceremony of marriage. And he set the basket adrift on the Ganges, exactly as it was before, putting a lamp on the top of it, and placing a fierce monkey inside it. The prince having departed with that pearl of maidens, the pupils of the hermit came there in the course of their search, and saw that basket, and took it up and carried it to the hermit. Then he being delighted, said to them, "I will take this upstairs and perform incantations with it alone, but you must lie in silence this night." When he had said this, the ascetic took the basket to the top of the monastery, and opened it, eager to behold the merchant's daughter. And then a monkey of terrible appearance sprang out of it, [202] and rushed upon the ascetic, like his own immoral conduct incarnate in bodily form. The monkey in its fury immediately tore off with its teeth the nose of the wicked ascetic, and his ears with its claws, as if it had been