Note 8 — Chapter LXXXVI · (Vetála 12)

Then the king saw a terrible Rákshasa approaching, looking like Hades embodied in a human shape, with his cavernous mouth, black as night, opened wide. That Rákshasa uttered an appalling roar, and swooping down on Mṛigánkavatí, put her in his mouth and swallowed her. When the mighty king saw that, he was at once, so to speak, on fire with excessive anger, and rushing forward with his great sword, black as a snake that has cast its slough,8 drawn from the sheath, he cut off with it the head of the charging Rákshasa, the lips of which were firmly pressed together. Then the burning fire of the king’s anger was quenched by the stream of blood that poured forth from the trunk of the Rákshasa, but not the fire of his grief at the loss of his beloved. Then the king was blinded with the darkness of bewilderment, and at a loss what to do, when suddenly Mṛigánkavatí cleft asunder the body of that Rákshasa, which was dark as a cloud, and emerged alive and uninjured, illuminating all the horizon like a spotless moon. When the king saw his beloved thus delivered from danger, he rushed eagerly forward and embraced her, exclaiming, “Come! Come!” And he said to her, “My beloved, what does all this mean? Is it a dream or a delusion?” When the king asked the Vidyádharí this question, she remembered the truth, and said: “Listen, my husband! This is no delusion, nor is it a dream; but such was the curse imposed upon me by my father, a king of the Vidyádharas. For my father, who formerly lived in this city, though he had many sons, was so fond of me, that he would never take food when I was not present. But I, being devoted to the worship of Śiva, used always to come to this uninhabited place on the fourteenth and eighth days of the two fortnights.