CHAPTER VII. Then, having taken a vow of silence, I came into the presence of the sovereign, and there a certain Bráhman recited a sloka he had composed, and the king himself addressed him correctly in the Sanskrit language; and the people who were present in court were delighted when they witnessed that. Then the king said deferentially to Sarvavarman--"Tell me thyself after what fashion the god shewed thee favour." Hearing that, Sarvavarman proceeded to relate to the king the whole story of Kártikeya's favourable acceptance of him. "I went, O king, on that occasion fasting and silent from this place, so when the journey came to an end, being very despondent, and emaciated with my severe austerities, worn out I fell senseless on the ground. Then, I remember, a man with a spear in his hand came and said to me in distinct accents, 'Rise up, my son, everything shall turn out favourably for thee.' By that speech I was, as it were, immediately bedewed with a shower of nectar, and I woke up, and seemed free from hunger and thirst and in good ease. Then I approached the neighbourhood of the god's temple, overpowered with the weight of my devotion, and after bathing I entered the inner shrine of the god in a state of agitated suspense. Then that Lord Skanda [98] gave me a sight of himself within, and thereupon Sarasvatí in visible shape entered my mouth. So that holy god, manifested before me, recited the sútra beginning 'the traditional doctrine of letters.' On hearing that, I, with the levity which is so natural to mankind, guessed the next sútra and uttered it myself. Then that god said to me, 'if thou hadst not uttered it thyself, this grammatical treatise would have supplanted that of Pánini. As it is, on account of its conciseness, it shall be called Kátantra, and Kálápaka, from the tail (kalápa) of the peacock on which I ride.' Having said this, that god himself in visible form revealed to me that new and short grammar, [99] and then added this besides; 'That king of thine in a former birth was himself a holy sage, a pupil of the hermit Bharadvája, named Krishna, great in austerity: and he, having beheld a hermit's daughter who loved him in return, suddenly felt the smart of the wound which the shaft of the flowery-arrowed god inflicts. So, having been cursed by the hermits, he has now become incarnate here, and that hermit's daughter has become incarnate as his queen.