The ocean of story, being C.H. Tawney's translation of Somadeva's ...

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN 103
ground. And when he recovered consciousness he bewailed
his father and mother and his father's ministers, in company
with his own ministers, who had lost their fathers.
But the chiefs of the Vidyadharas and Dhanavati admonished
him, saying :
" How is it, King, that you are beside
yourself, though you know the nature of this versatile world,
that perishes in a moment, and is like the show of a juggler ?
And how can you lament for your parents, that are not to be
lamented for, as they have done all they had to do on earth :
who have seen you their son sole emperor over all the Vidyadharas
? " When he had been thus admonished he offered
water to his parents, and put another question to that science :
" Where is my Uncle Gopalaka now ? What did he do ? "
Then that science went on
"
to say to that : king When
the King of Vatsa had gone to the mountain from which he
meant to throw himself, Gopalaka, having lamented for him
and his sister, and considering all things unstable, remained
outside the city, and summoning his brother, Palaka, from
UjjayinI, made over to him that kingdom of Kausambi also.
And then, having seen his younger brother established in
two kingdoms, he went to the hermitage of Kasyapa in the
ascetic grove on the Black Mountain, 1 bent on abandoning
the world. And there your uncle Gopalaka now is, clothed in
a dress of bark, in the midst of self-mortifying hermits."
When Naravahanadatta heard that, he went in a chariot
to the Black Mountain, with his suite, eager to visit that
uncle. There he alighted from the sky, surrounded by Vidyadhara
princes, and beheld that hermitage of the hermit
Kasyapa. It seemed to gaze on him with many roaming,
black, antelope-like, rolling eyes, and to welcome him with the
songs of its birds. With the lines of smoke ascending into the
sky, where pious men were offering the Agnihotra oblations,
it seemed to point the way to heaven to the hermits. It was
full of many mountain-like, huge elephants, and resorted to
by troops of monkeys 2
; and so seemed like a strange sort
of Patala, above ground, and free from darkness.
1
Asitagiri.
2 This passage is full of lurking puns. It may mean "full of world-
upholding kings of the snakes, and of many Kapilas."