Note 2 — Chapter XCII · (Vetála 18.)

In that city there was a learned Bráhman, named Devasvámin, who had offered many sacrifices, and possessed great wealth, and who was highly honoured by the king, whose name was Chandraprabha. In time there was born to that Bráhman a son, named Chandrasvámin, and he, though he had studied the sciences, was, when he grew up, exclusively devoted to the vice of gambling.2 Now once on a time that Bráhman’s son, Chandrasvámin, entered a great gambling-hall to gamble. Calamities seemed to be continually watching that hall with tumbling dice for rolling eyes, like the black antelope in colour, and saying to themselves, “Whom shall we seize on here?” And the hall, full of the noise of the altercations of gamblers, seemed to utter this cry, “Who is there whose wealth I could not take away? I could impoverish even Kuvera the lord of Alaká.” Then he entered the hall, and playing dice with gamblers, he lost his clothes and all, and then he lost borrowed money in addition. And when he was called upon to pay that impossible sum, he could not do it, so the keeper of the gambling-hall seized him and beat him with sticks.3 And that Bráhman’s son, when beaten with sticks all over his body, made himself motionless as a stone, and to all appearance dead, and remained in that state.