9. I have fortunately obtained you as two great lights in this forest; you both are entitled to my reverence here, and deign now to acquaint me, with the good intent which has brought you hither. 10. The prince answered:—O thou sprout of the savage race of Rákshas! the people of this province are always afflicted in their hearts by a certain evil. 11. It is the obdurate disease of Vishuchi or cholic pain, which troubles the people of this part, I have therefore come out with my guards to find her out in my nightly rounds. 12. This cholic pain is not removed from the hearts of men by any medicine, so I have come out in search of the mantra revealed to her for its cure. 13. It is my business and professed duty, to persecute such wicked beings as thyself, that infest our ignorant subjects in this manner, and this is all that I have to tell thee and do in this place. 14. Therefore, O good lady! do thou promise to me in thy own words, that thou shalt never injure any living being in future. 15. The Rákshasí replied:—Well! I tell thee in truth, my lord! that I shall hence forward never kill any body. 16. The prince replied:—If it be so O thou liver on animal flesh! tell me how shalt thou support thy body by thy abstaining from animal food? 17. The Rákshasí replied:—It is now passed six months, O prince! that I have risen from my entranced meditation, and fostered my desire for food, which I wholly renounce today. 18. I will again repair to the mountain top, and betake myself to my steadfast meditation, and sit there contented as long as I like, in the posture of an unmoving statue. 19. I will restrain myself by unshaken meditation until my death, and then I shall quit this body in its time with gladness. This is my resolution. 20. I tell you now, O prince! that until the end of this life and body of mine, I shall no more take away the life of any living being, and you may rely assured upon my word. 21. There is the mount Himalaya by name, standing in the heart of the northern region, and stretching in one sweep, from the eastern to western main. 22. There had I dwelt at first in a cave of its golden peak, in the shape of an iron statue, and also as the fragment of a cloud, and borne the appellation of Karkatí the Rákshasí:—(the crablike crooked Sycorax). 23. There I obtained the sight of Brahmá by the austerity of my devotion; and expressed my desire of killing mankind, in the shape of a destructive needle. 24. I obtained the boon accordingly, and passed a great many years in the act of afflicting living brings, and feeding upon their entrails in the form of the cholic pain. 25. I was then prohibited by Brahmá to kill the learned, and was instructed in the great mantra for my observance. 26. He then gave me the power of piercing the hearts of men, with some other diseases which infest all mankind.