Note 15 — Chapter LXXII

Then, one day, the king’s painter, whose name was Mantharaka, an intimate friend of his, said to him in private, when in this state owing to the sorrow of separation: “Friend, why do you remain leaning against the wall like a man in a picture? Like a lifeless image, you neither eat, nor hear, nor see.” When his friend the painter asked him this question persistently, the merchant’s son at last told him his desire. The painter said to him; “It is not fitting that you, a merchant’s son, should fall in love with a princess. Let the swan desire the beautiful face of the lotuses of all ordinary lakes, but what has he to do with the delight of enjoying the lotus of that lake, which is the navel of Vishṇu?” Still the painter could not prevent him from nursing his passion; so he painted the princess on a piece of canvas, and gave her picture to him to solace his longing, and to enable him to while away the time. And the young merchant spent his time in gazing on, coaxing, and touching, and adorning her picture, and he fancied that it was the real princess Induyaśas, and gradually became absorbed in her, and did all that he did under that belief.15 And in course of time he was so engrossed by that fancy, that he seemed to see her, though she was only a painted figure, talking to him and kissing him. Then he was happy, because he had obtained in imagination union with his beloved, and he was contented, because the whole world was for him contained in that piece of painted canvas.