The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of StorySomadeva Bhatta, active 11th century
General
The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story
Somadeva Bhatta, active 11th century
Folk literature -- Themes, motives; Hindu mythology; India -- Social life and customs; Tales -- India
When Gunádhya had said this, Kánabhúti asked, "Why, my lord, was the
king called Sátaváhana?" Then Gunádhya said, Listen, I will tell you
the reason. There was a king of great power named Dvípikarni. He had
a wife named Saktimatí, whom he valued more than life, and once upon a
time a snake bit her as she was sleeping in the garden. Thereupon she
died, and that king thinking only of her, though he had no son, took a
vow of perpetual chastity. Then once upon a time the god of the moony
crest said to him in a dream--"While wandering in the forest thou shalt
behold a boy mounted on a lion, take him and go home, he shall be thy
son." Then the king woke up, and rejoiced remembering that dream, and
one day in his passion for the chase he went to a distant wood; there
in the middle of the day that king beheld on the bank of a lotus-lake
a boy splendid as the sun, riding on a lion; the lion desiring to
drink water set down the boy, and then the king remembering his dream
slew it with one arrow. The creature thereupon abandoned the form of
a lion, and suddenly assumed the shape of a man; the king exclaimed,
"Alas! what means this? tell me!" and then the man answered him--"O
king, I am a Yaksha of the name of Sáta, an attendant upon the god
of wealth; long ago I beheld the daughter of a Rishi bathing in the
Ganges; she too, when she beheld me, felt love arise in her breast,
like myself: then I made her my wife by the Gándharva form of marriage;
and her relatives, finding it out, in their anger cursed me and her,
saying, "You two wicked ones, doing what is right in your own eyes,
shall become lions." The hermit-folk appointed that her curse should
end when she gave birth to offspring, and that mine should continue
longer, until I was slain by thee with an arrow. So we became a pair
of lions; she in course of time became pregnant, and then died after
this boy was born, but I brought him up on the milk of other lionesses,
and lo! to-day I am released from my curse having been smitten by thee
with an arrow. Therefore receive this noble son which I give thee, for
this thing was foretold long ago by those hermit-folk." Having said
this that Guhyaka named Sáta disappeared, [89] and the king taking
the boy went home; and because he had ridden upon Sáta he gave the
boy the name of Sátaváhana, and in course of time he established him
in his kingdom. Then, when that king Dvípikarni went to the forest,
this Sátaváhana became sovereign of the whole earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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