the other, Jaya.[13] And Saraswati was born as the
daughter of the wife of Bimba, while Kamadewa was born as the son of the
wife of Jaya. Now Bimba was a king: and Jaya was his cousin on the
mother's side. And very soon afterwards, Jaya set upon his cousin,
laying claim to the throne, and driving him away, took his kingdom, and
kept it for himself. And he caught the wife of Bimba, and put her to
death, as he would have done also with her daughter and her husband. But
Bimba succeeded in escaping with his daughter, and ran away and hid
himself. So Jaya remained in triumph, reigning over the kingdom, whose
capital stood on the very spot on which we are sitting now. For the
kingdoms of the earth come and go upon it, like the shadows of the
clouds: and they grow up suddenly like grass, and perish a little later,
and vanish clean away, leaving behind them absolutely nothing but
mounds, such as those now lying all about thee, and fragments of
recollections, and half-forgotten names, like the dreams of the night
which morning obliterates and drives away, vaguely hanging in its memory
like wreaths of mist curling and twisting on the black still surface of
a pool in some dark valley screened from the early sun by one of thy
father's[14] peaks.

[Footnote 13: _i.e._ _the disc of the moon_, and _victory_. Pronounce Jaya
to rhyme with _eye_.]

[Footnote 14: _i.e._ the Himalaya.]

And of all the elements that made up Java's good fortune, there was not
one which filled him with such pride and exultation as his son. And he
looked upon him as the very fruit of his birth in visible form, little
dreaming, that could he but have looked into the future, and seen what
was coming, he would rather have deemed himself more fortunate to live
and die without any son at all, than to have begotten such a son as he
actually had. For sons resemble winds, which sometimes lift their
families like clouds to heaven, and sometimes dash them to the earth,
like hail.

For having waited so long to get a son at all, till hope was all but
gone, the joy of both his parents, when he actually arrived, was so
extravagantly great, that they could not make too much of him. And as he
grew up, they spoiled him so completely, by the want of all discretion
in their admiration and the flattery of their affectionate caresses,
that after a while he became utterly intolerable, even to themselves.
And this came about, not only by reason of their own foolishness, but
al