Note 2 — Chapter LXXV

Then the heroic monarch, as soon as he had got into the black fortnight, remembered the request of the mendicant, which he had promised to accomplish for him, and as soon as night came, he enveloped his head in a black cloth, and left the palace unperceived, sword in hand, and went fearlessly to the cemetery. It was obscured by a dense and terrible pall of darkness, and its aspect was rendered awful by the ghastly flames from the burning of the funeral pyres, and it produced horror by the bones, skeletons, and skulls of men that appeared in it. In it were present formidable Bhútas and Vetálas, joyfully engaged in their horrible activity, and it was alive with the loud yells of jackals,2 so that it seemed like a second mysterious tremendous form of Bhairava. And after he had searched about in it, he found that mendicant under a banyan-tree, engaged in making a circle, and he went up to him and said, “Here I am arrived, mendicant; tell me, what can I do for you?”