Note 5 — Chapter LXXIII

And one day, as I was sporting on mount Kailása with my friend Kapiśabhrú, I saw a young Yaksha named Aṭṭahása. He too, as he stood among his companions, beheld me; and immediately our eyes were mutually attracted by one another’s beauty. When my father saw that, and ascertained that the match would be no mésalliance, he summoned Aṭṭahása, and arranged our marriage. And after he had fixed an auspicious day, he took me home, but Aṭṭahása returned to his home with his friends in high spirits. But the next day my friend Kapiśabhrú came to me with a downcast air, and when I questioned her, she was at length induced to say this; “Friend, I must tell you this bad news, though it is a thing which should not be told. As I was coming to-day, I saw your betrothed Aṭṭahása in a garden named Chitrasthala, on a plateau of the Himálayas, full of longing for you. And his friends, in order to amuse him, made him in sport king of the Yakshas, and they made his brother Díptaśikha personate Naḍakúvara his son, and they themselves became his ministers. While your beloved was being solaced in this way by his friends, Naḍakúvara, who was roaming at will through the air, saw him. And the son of the king of wealth, being enraged at what he saw, summoned him, and cursed him in the following words; ‘Since, though a servant, you desire to pose as a lord, become a mortal, you villain! As you wish to mount, fall!’ When he laid this curse on Aṭṭahása, he answered despondingly, ‘Prince, I foolishly did this to dispel my longing, not through aspiring to any lofty rank, so have mercy upon me.’ When Naḍakúvara heard this sorrowful speech of his, he ascertained by meditation that the case was so, and said to him by way of fixing an end for the curse, ‘You shall become a man, and beget on that Yakshiṇí, with whom you are in love, your younger brother Díptaśikha by way of son,5 and so you shall be delivered from your curse, and obtain your own rank once more, together with your wife, and this brother of yours shall be born as your son, and after he has reigned on earth, he shall be released from his curse.’ When the son of the god of wealth had said this, Aṭṭahása disappeared somewhere or other by virtue of the curse. And when I saw that, my friend, I came here to you grieved.” When my friend said this to me, I was reduced to a terrible state by grief, and after I had bewailed my lot, I went and told it to my parents, and I spent that time in hope of a re-union with my beloved.