Note 1 — Chapter XI

In the meanwhile the ambassador, sent by the king of Vatsa in answer to Chaṇḍamahásena’s embassy, went and told that monarch his master’s reply. Chaṇḍamahásena for his part, on hearing it, began to reflect—“It is certain that that proud king of Vatsa will not come here. And I cannot send my daughter to his court, such conduct would be unbecoming; so I must capture him by some stratagem and bring him here as a prisoner.” Having thus reflected and deliberated with his ministers, the king had made a large artificial elephant like his own, and, after filling it with concealed warriors, he placed it in the Vindhya forest. There the scouts kept in his pay by the king of Vatsa, who was passionately fond of the sport of elephant-catching, discerned it from a distance;1 and they came with speed and informed the king of Vatsa in these words: “O king, we have seen a single elephant roaming in the Vindhya forest, such that nowhere else in this wide world is his equal to be found, filling the sky with his stature, like a moving peak of the Vindhya range.”