[paragraph continues] I pray and at this moment you are to remember to repeat these words, "O commander-in-chief, your king is not sick, but he is infatuated with your wife Ummadanti. If he shall get her, he will live; otherwise he will die. If you wish him to live, give up Ummadanti to him." This is what you are to say." And having thus schooled him he sent him away. So the servant went next day and seated himself inside the tree and when the general came to the place and put up his prayer, he repeated his lesson. The general said, "It is well," and with an obeisance to the deity he went and told the king's ministers, and entering the city he climbed up to the palace and knocked at the door of the royal closet. [218] The king having recovered his senses asked who it was. "It is I, Ahiparaka, my lord." Then he opened the king's door and going in he saluted the king and repeated a stanza:

While kneeling at a sacred shrine, O king,
A yakkha came and told me a strange thing,
How Ummadanti had enslaved thy will:
Take her and so thy heart's desire fulfil.

Then the king asked, "Friend Ahiparaka, do even the yakkhas know that I have been talking foolishly owing to my infatuation for Ummadanti?" "Yes, my lord," he said. The king thought, "My vileness is known throughout the world," and he felt ashamed. And taking his stand in righteousness he uttered another stanza:

Fallen from grace no godhead shall I win,
And all the world will hear of my great sin:
Think too how great thy grief of mind would be,
Shouldst thou no more thy Ummadanti see.

The remaining stanzas are repeated by the two alternately.

Except thyself and me, O king, no one
In the whole world will know the deed that's done:
Lo! Ummadanti is my gift to thee,
Thy passion sated, send her back to me.

The sinner thinks, "No mortal man has been
A witness of my guilty deed, I ween,"
[219] Yet all he does will fall within the ken
Of ghostly beings and of holy men.

Who in this world, supposing thou shouldst say,
"I loved her not," would any credence pay?
Think too how great thy grief of mind would be,
Shouldst thou no more thy Ummadanti see.

She was, great king, as dear to me as life,
In very sooth a well-beloved wife;
Yet, sire, to Ummadanti straight repair,
E'en as a lion to his rocky lair.

The sage howe'er oppressed by his own woe,
Will scarce an act that wins him bliss forego,
E'en the dull fool intoxicate with bliss
Would ne'er be guilty of a sin like this.

A fostering parent, king, I own in thee,
Husband and lord, yea god art thou to me,
Thy slaves my wife and child, and I thy thrall,
O Sivi, do thy pleasure with us all.