Kathakoca or Treasury of Stories

SR No.: 016059
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: C H Tawney
Publisher: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation New Delhi
Publication Year: 1975
Total Pages: 288
Language: English
Classification: Dictionary & Dictionary
File Size: 15 MB

Page 135

109
tioners took her into the cemetery, and at that very moment the sun went to his rest, as if unable to witness her miserable, pitiable condition, and immediately darkness was diffused all over the landscape. Then one of the executioners drew his sword, and said to Řishidattá : * Bloodthirsty one, think upon some favourite deity, for you will this moment cease to be. While, after saying this, he was brandishing his sword, Rishidattá, in her terror, fell on the ground in a faint. Then all the executioners, seeing that she seemed to be dead, said : What is the use of this slaying of the slain ?' So they returned to the city. Now, in the evening twilight the cool breeze began to blow on her body, and she recovered consciousness, and seeing the cemetery, and not seeing the executioners, she fled to save her life, like a doe escaped from the net. And after she had gone a long way and reached an upinhabited forest, she lamented aloud : 0 my father ! O my father! deprived of you I have fallen into the slough of calamity; so come and support with your hand your own child. If I had not been foolish enough to separate from you then, how would misfortune have come upon me now? O my soul! what sin did you commit in a former birth that such a disgrace should have befallen me, though I am innocent ?' After she had uttered many lamentations of this kind, she walked on slowly towards the south, with the intention of repairing to her father's hermitage, and the way was made clear to her by the sahakára trees, which she had sown with her own hand on the path by which she had come after her marriage : so she followed that track, and in course of time reached the hermitage. When she saw the place where her father was burned, Rishidattá wept bitterly. She said : “Alas! father, here is your child returned. Where have you gone? Come and appear to me. Have pity upon me and comfort me, who am afflicted, downcast, solitary, and without a protector. Alas! father, in this uninhabited wood, deprived of you, with whom can I take refuge ? where can I go? what can I do? When Rishidattá had