And his elephants with their ears like white chowries, and with streams of ichor flowing from their temples reddened by being mixed with vermilion, appeared, as he marched along, like the sons of the mountains, streaked with white clouds of autumn, and pouring down streams of water coloured with red mineral, sent by the parent hills, in their fear, to join his expedition. And the dust from the earth concealed the brightness of the sun, as if thinking that the king could not endure the effulgent splendour of rivals. And the two queens followed the king step by step on the way, like the goddess of Fame, and the Fortune of Victory, attracted by his politic virtues. [283] The silk of his host's banners, tossed to and fro in the wind, seemed to say to his enemies,--"Bend in submission, or flee." Thus he marched, beholding the districts full of blown white lotuses, like the uplifted hoods of the serpent Sesha [284] terrified with fear of the destruction of the world. In the meanwhile those spies, commissioned by Yaugandharáyana, assuming the vows of scull-bearing worshippers of Siva, reached the city of Benares. And one of them, who was acquainted with the art of juggling, exhibiting his skill, assumed the part of teacher, and the others passed themselves off as his pupils. And they celebrated that pretended teacher, who subsisted on alms, from place to place, saying, "This master of ours is acquainted with past, present, and future." Whatever that sage predicted, in the way of fires and so on, to those who came to consult him about the future, his pupils took care to bring about secretly; so he became famous. He gained complete ascendancy over the mind of a certain Rájpút courtier there, a favourite of the king's, who was won over by this mean skill of the teacher's. And when the war with the king of Vatsa came on, the king Brahmadatta began to consult him by the agency of the Rájpút, so that he learnt the secrets of the government. Then the minister of Brahmadatta, Yogakarandaka, laid snares in the path of the king of Vatsa as he advanced. He tainted, by means of poison and other deleterious substances, the trees, flowering creepers, water and grass all along the line of march. And he sent poison-damsels [285] as dancing girls among the enemy's host, and he also despatched nocturnal assassins into their midst. But that spy, who had assumed the character of a prophet, found all this out, and then quickly informed Yaugandharáyana of it by means of his companions. Yaugandharáyana for his part, when he found it out, purified at every step along the line of march the poisoned grass, water, and so on, by means of corrective antidotes, and forbade in the camp the society of strange women, and with the help of Rumanvat he captured and put to death those assassins. When he heard of that, Brahmadatta having found all his stratagems fail, came to the conclusion that the king of Vatsa, who filled with his forces the whole country, was hard to overcome.