पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Studies.djvu/२६

18 SANSKRIT STUDIES let me throughout be so deluded'. The incident only made his grief for the lost queen all the more poignant. About this time Udayana had to leave Rājagṛha as the arrange- ments for the expedition against Aruni were complete, thanks chiefly to the untiring exertions of Yaugandharāyaṇa. Placing himself at the head of the allied armies of Vatsa and Magadha, he marched against the enemy and easily vanquished him. One day, after his victorious return, while Udayana was in an upstair hall of the royal mansion that had been set apart for him at Raja- grha, he heard sweet music played by a street mendicant; and he at once discovered that the notes were emanating from the vīņā which he had presented to his beloved Vasavadattā,-so delicate was his perception of sound and so attached was he to Vāsavadattā. We have referred above to Udayana's captivity at Ujjain which led to his marriage with Väsavadattā. It was with the romantic circumstances of that marriage that the Ghosavatī-for that was the name of the viņā-was associated and it was the very same instrument on which some one was playing in the street. Udayana at once made enquiries of the mendicant who revealed where and how he had secured it and in what plight it was when he saw it. It had been thrown upon brambles in a forest and it bore on its body the droppings of the winged folk of the forest. Udayana took the cīņā which the minstrel willingly made over to him and it once again brought vividly before his mind the whole tragedy of Vasavadattā; but it also helped him to spend his days closer, as it seemed to him, to his beloved lost. Now Vasavadatta's parents at Ujjain who had received the news of the restoration to Udayana of his lost kingdom, though sorrowing for the woeful loss of their daughter, sent envoys to congratulate him. They also sent, to serve as a sort of memento to him, the portraits of himself and Vasavadatta which they had used in the marriage they celebrated after his escape from Ujjain. The envoys were admitted into the presence of Udayana, when Padmavati also was with him. After the usual exchange of cour- tesies, the portraits were presented and when Padmavati was about to bow to the likeness of her departed sister, she at once observed the resemblance of the person portrayed there as Vāsavadattā to the lady under her protection. When she mentioned this surprising resemblance to Udayana, he naturally grew anxious to see the lady but restrained himself when he learnt the circum-