400 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
order to support the others; but this arrangement was stopped by the interventions of Satyavrata, who liberated the son when bound, and maintained the family by providing them with the flesh of wild animals; and according to his father’s injunction, consecrated himself for the performance of a silent penance for twelve years.”
The next episode in which they appear on opposite sides is that of Harishchandra the son of Trisanku. The story is told in the Vishnu Purana and in the Markendeya Purana. This is how the story runs:
“On one occasion, when hunting the king heard a sound of female lamentation which proceeded, it appears, from the sciences who were becoming mastered by the austerely fervid sage Vishvamitra, in a way they had never been before by anyone else; and were consequently crying out in alarm at his superiority. In fulfilment of his duty as a Kshatriya to defend the weak, and inspired by the god Ganesha, who had entered into him, Harishchandra exclaimed, “What sinner is this who is binding fire in the hem of his garment, white, I, his lord, am present, resplendent with force and fiery vigour?’ He shall to-day enter on his long sleep, pierced in all his limbs by arrows, which, by their discharge from my bow, illuminate all the quarters of the firmament.” Vishvamitra was provoked by this address. In consequence of his wrath the Sciences instantly perished, and Harishchandra, trembling like the leaf of an Asvattha tree, submissively represented that he had merely done his duty as a king, which he defined as consisting in the bestowl of gifts on eminent Brahmins and other persons of slender means, the protection of the timid, and war against enemies. Vishvamitra hereupon demands a gift as a Brahman intent upon receiving one. The. king offers him whatsoever he may ask: Gold, his own son, wife, body, like kingdom, good fortune. The saint first requires the present for the Rajasuya sacrifice. On this being promised, and still more offered, he asks for the empire of the whole earth, including everything but Harishchandra himself, his wife and son, and his virtue which follows its posses or wherever he goes.” “Harishchandra joyfully agrees. Vishvamitra then requires him to strip off all his ornaments, to clothe himself in the bark of trees, and to quit the kingdom with his wife Saviya (Taramati) and his son. When he is departing the sage stops him and demands payment of his yet unpaid sacrificial fee. The king replies that he has only the persons of his wife, his son, and himself left. Vishvamitra insists that he must nevertheless pay; and that “unfulfilled promises of gifts to Brahmans bring destruction.” The unfortunate prince, after being threatened with a curse, engages to make the payment in a month;