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The Story in the ‘Ocean of the Rivers

of Stories’ (Katha/sarit/sagara)

Let us begin with the story of:

Kalinga·sena and the Magician

King Udayana wanted to make an alliance with a king whose daughter, Kalinga·sena, came to Udayana’s kingdom of Kaushambi and asked him to marry her, which he agreed to do. But Udayana’s prime minister, who did not want this marriage to happen (because he had promised the king’s first wife that she would have no co-wife), intrigued with the astrologers to delay the date of the wedding for six months, during which Kalinga·sena lived in the kingdom. The prime minister mentally summoned a demon (raksasa) named Yogeshvara and told him to watch over Kalinga·sena night and day in order to catch her doing something that would prove her unfit to wed the king. In particular, he advised, “If she were to have an affair with a celestial magician (vidya/dhara) or someone like that, that would be very fortunate. And you must observe the divine lover when he is asleep, even if he comes in a different form, for divine beings assume their own forms when they fall asleep.”

Now, a celestial magician named Madana·vega had fallen in love with Kalinga·sena; he used his magic to come to her room in the form of the king and seduce her. The demon found the magician in his own form, asleep on the bed of the sleeping Kalinga·sena; for he was a divine man and had lost his false form because his magic power to take such a form vanished when he was asleep. The demon called the prime minister, who brought the king to Kalinga·sena’s ________