Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c8.2832.3

c8.2832.3

The goddess was pleased with his songs and took the sleeping king to the other side of the sea. When he woke up next morning he saw himself on the other shore and was pleasantly surprised. He walked about on the shore and saw an āśrama and peeping in saw a sage sitting inside. On seeing the king the sage told him thus "Oh Puṣkararāja, Vinayavatī in search of whom you have come here has just gone to pluck flowers for her worship. She will come just now and you can then accept your wife of your previous birth as your wife of this life." The king wanted to know more about Vinayavatī when the sage said she was his wife in his previous birth also. Then the sage said: "Once there was a Vaiśya called Dharmasena in Tāmralipti. He married a girl named Vidyullekhā. All their wealth was stolen by thieves and grief-stricken they attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the fire. They saw two swans flying towards them and without waiting for them to reach them they committed suicide. In their next birth they became a swan couple. They lived on a date tree during rainy seasons. Once in a storm the tree fell down and in the darkness each went its own way. In the morning the male swan started searching for his mate. In the end he found her in the lake of Mānasa in Svarga. They lived there happily till the rainy season was over and then they went and stayed on a mountain.