Note 3 — Chapter LIX

Then my fear was at an end, but I spent a night long from grief, and in the morning, when the flaming eye3 of the world had mounted high in the heaven, I, being thirsty, went to the bank of a neighbouring lake full of lotuses, tumbling frequently, clinging to the earth with my wings, and there I saw on the sand of the lake a hermit, named Maríchi, who had just bathed, as it were my good works in a former state of existence. He, when he saw me, refreshed me with drops of water flung in my face, and, putting me in the hollow of a leaf, out of pity, carried me to his hermitage. There Pulastya, the head of the hermitage, laughed when he saw me, and being asked by the other hermits, why he laughed, having supernatural insight, he said—“When I beheld this parrot, who is a parrot in consequence of a curse, I laughed out of sorrow, but after I have said my daily prayers, I will tell a story connected with him, which shall cause him to remember his former birth, and the occurrences of his former lives.” After saying this, the hermit Pulastya rose up for his daily prayer, and, after he had performed his daily prayer, being again solicited by the hermits, the great sage told this story concerning me.