So in the morning time she took her stand in that place, and sang with a voice of honey, so that the music was as sweet as the song, and the song as sweet as the music. The prince lay listening. Next day, he commanded that she should stand near and sing. The next day, he commanded her to stand in the private chamber, and the next, in his own presence; and so by and bye desire arose in him; he went the way of the world, and knew the joy of love. "I will not let another have this woman," he resolved; and taking his sword, he ran amuck through the street, chasing the people. The king had him captured, and banished him from the city along with the girl.

Together they journeyed to the jungle, away down the Ganges. There, with the river on one side and the sea on the other, they made a hut, and there they lived. She sat indoors, and cooked the roots and bulbs; the Bodhisatta brought wild fruits from the forest.

One day, when he was away in search of fruits, a hermit from an island in the sea, who was going his rounds to get food, saw smoke as he passed through the air, and alighted beside this hut.

"Sit down until it is cooked," said the woman; then her woman's charms seduced his soul, and brought it down from his mystic trance, making a breach in his purity. And he, like a crow with broken wing, [330] unable to leave her, sat there the whole day till he saw the Bodhisatta coming, and then ran off quickly in the direction of the sea. "This must be an enemy," thought he, and drawing his sword set off in chase.

But the ascetic, making as though he would rise in the air. fell down into the sea. Then thought the Bodhisatta,

"Yon man is doubtless an ascetic who came hither through the air; and now that his trance is broken, he has fallen into the sea. I must go help him." And standing on the shore he uttered these verses:

"Not through the sea, but by your magic power,
You journeyed hither at an earlier hour;
Now by a woman's evil company
You have been made to plunge beneath the sea.

"Full of seductive wiles, deceitful all,
They tempt the most pure-hearted to his fall.
Down--down they sink: a man should flee afar
From women, when he knows what kind they are.

"Whomso they serve, for gold or for desire,
They burn him up like fuel in the fire ."