Note 7 — Chapter CXIV
C. H. (Charles Henry) Tawney translation
One night, that king, as he was lying on a bed on the top of a palace exposed to the rays of the moon, saw a couple of swans crossing through the air, with bodies of gleaming gold, looking like two golden lotuses opened in the water of the heavenly Ganges,7 and attended by a train of king-geese. When that wonderful pair had passed from his eyes, the king was for a long time afflicted, and his mind was full of regret at no longer enjoying that sight. He passed that night without sleeping, and next morning he told his minister Śivabhúti what he had seen, and said to him, “So, if I cannot feast my eyes on those golden swans to my heart’s content, of what profit to me is my kingdom or my life?”