Note 4 — XVI. VIŚVAṆTARA.1

With a hundred thousand similar thoughts of woe she hastened towards the hermitage. Entering therein she looked mournfully around, and, not seeing the children, she sadly with trembling heart followed the traces left on the ground of the hermitage. “Here the boy Kṛishṇa and his sister were wont to play with the young gazelles; here is the house which they twain made out of earth; these are the playthings of the two children. As they are not to be seen, it is possible that they may have gone unseen by me into the hut of foliage and may be sleeping there.” Thus thinking and hoping to see the children, she laid aside the roots and fruits, and with tearful eyes embraced her husband’s feet, asking, “O lord, whither have the boy and girl gone?” Viśvaṇtara replied, “A Brahman came to me full of hope. To him have I given the two children. Thereat rejoice.” When he had spoken these words, Madrī fell to the ground like a gazelle pierced by a poisoned arrow, and struggled like a fish taken out of the water. Like a crane robbed of her young ones she uttered sad cries. Like a cow, whose calf has died, she gave forth many a sound of wailing. Then she said, “Shaped like young lotuses, with hands whose flesh is as tender as a young lotus leaf,4 my two children are suffering, are undergoing pain, wherever they have gone. Slender as young gazelles, gazelle-eyed, delighting in the lairs of the gazelles, what sufferings are my children now undergoing in the power of strangers? With tearful eyes and sad sobbing, enduring cruel sufferings, now that they are no longer seen by me, they live downtrodden among needy men. They who were nourished at my breast, who used to eat roots, flowers, and fruits, they who, experiencing indulgence, were ever wont to enjoy themselves to the full, those two children of mine now undergo great sufferings. Severed from their mother and their family, deserted by the cruelty of their relatives, thrown together with sinful men, my two children are now undergoing great suffering. Constantly tormented by hunger and thirst, made slaves by those into whose power they have fallen, they will doubtless experience the pangs of despair. Surely I have committed some terrible sin in a previous existence, in severing hundreds of beings from their dearest ones. Therefore do I now lament like a cow which has lost its calf. If there exists any exorcism, by which I can gain over all beings, so shall my two children, after having been made slaves, be by it rendered free.”