BRAHMINS VERSUS KSHATRIYAS 401
and commences his journey with a wife unused to such fatigues, amid the universal lamentations of his subjects. While he lingers, listening to their affectionate remonstrances against his desertion of his kingdom, Vishvamitra, comes up and being incensed at the delay and the King’s apparent hesitation, strikes the queen with his staff, as she is dragged on by her husband. Harishchandra then proceeded with his wife and little son to Benares, imagining that this divine city, as the special property of Siva, could not be possessed by any mortal. Here he found the relentless Vishvamitra waiting for him, and ready to press his demand for the payment of his sacrificial gift, even before the expiration of the full period of grace. In this extremity Saivya the queen suggests with a sobbing voice that her husband should sell her. On hearing this proposal Harishchandra swoons, then recovers, utters lamentations, and swoons again, and his wife, seeing his said condition, swoon also. While they are in a state of unconsciousness, their famished child exclaims in distress, “O father, father, give me bread; O mother, mother give me food: hunger overpowers me and my tongue is parched.” At this moment Vishvamitra returns, and after recalling Harishchandra to consciousness by spinkling water over him, again urges payment of the present. The king again swoons, and is again restored. The sag threatens to curse him if his engagement is not fulfilled by sunset. Being now pressed by his wife, the King agrees to sell her ading, however, “If my voice can utter such a wicked word, I do not what the most inhuman wretches cannot perpetrate.” He then goes into the city and in selfacusing language offers his queen for sale as a slave. A rich old Brahman offers to buy her at a price corresponding to her value, to do his household work. Seeing his mother dragged away, the child ran after her, his eyes dimmed with tears, and crying ‘mother’. The Brahman purchaser kicked him when he came up; but he would not let his mother go, and continued crying ‘mother, mother.’ The queen then said to the Brahman, “Be so kind, my master, as to but also this child, as without him I shall prove to thee but a useless purchase. Be thus merciful to me in my wretchedness, unite me with my son, like a cow to her calf.” The Brahman agrees: “Take this money and give me the boy.” After the Brahman had gone out of sight with his purchases, Vishvamitra again appeared and renewed his demands; and when the afflicted Harishchanda offered him the small sum he had obtained by the sale of his wife and son, he angrily replied, “If, miserable Kshatriya, thou thinkest this a sacrificial gift befitting my deserts, thou shalt soon beheld the transcendent power of my ardent austere fervour, of my spotless