Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8.11

v1.c8.11

We are told, too, of a fair one who reached a remarkably high pitch of virtue in the pleasures of love. King Parikshit rides off at full speed in the forest, lost by his retinue, and follows after a gazelle. Thus he is carried far away. Hungry, thirsty, and wearied, he sees there in the thicket an enchanting lake, covered with lotus-flowers. He throws his horse some of the lotus-stalks and sits down to rest. Then he hears sweet singing. As no human traces are anywhere to be seen, the king is filled with wonder, follows the voice, and finds a wondrous-fair maiden singing and plucking flowers. He woos her, and she consents, on condition that water must never be shown her. The king promises this, and so she becomes his wife. Meanwhile his followers come up, and she is borne in the litter to the royal city. Here Parikshit lives with her in great joy. But the minister has a delightful grove with a splendid tank laid out, and when the king goes to walk in it with his beloved, and sees the tank, he asks her to go down into the water. She goes down below, but does not come up again. The king in despair has the water drawn off from the tank : they find only a frog. " The frogs have eaten my beloved !" the king cries, and orders a general slaughter of the frogs in his kingdom. Then the king of the frogs comes in ascetic garb, shows the prince the wrong he is doing, and tells him that the lady is his daughter Suçobhanā, who has already befooled many kings. On Parikshit’s beseeching him, he gives her to him as wife. And when the king had received her, it was to him as though he had won the lordship of the three worlds; for his heart was hers because of her surpassing excellences in the surata; and with words choked with tears of joy he went down, did reverence to the king of the frogs, and said: “I thank thee”¹ (iii, 192.1 ff.).