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

108 THE OCEAN OF STORY
eats the heads of the police at night," and laying hold of that
Rakshasa by the hair he prepared to slay him.
"
King, do not slay me under
Then the Rakshasa said :
a false ! impression There is another creature in this
neighbourhood that eats the heads of the police." The
"
king said : Tell me I Who is it ? " And the Rakshasa
continued :
" There is in this neighbourhood an Asura of the
name of Angaraka, whose home is in Patala. He it is that
eats your police officers at the dead of night, O smiter of
your foes. Moreover, Prince, he carries off by force the
daughters of kings from every quarter, and makes them
attend on his daughter, Angaravatl. If you see him roaming
about in the forest slay him, and attain your object in that
way."
When the Rakshasa had said this, the king let him go,
and returned to his palace. And one day he went out to
hunt. And in the place where he was hunting he saw a
monstrous boar, with eyes red with fury, looking like a piece
of the Mountain of Antimony 1 fallen from heaven. The king
" Such a creature cannot be a real boar. I
said to himself :
wonder whether it is the Asura Angaraka, who has the power
of disguising himself " ; so he smote the boar with shafts.
But the boar recked not of his shafts, and, overturning his
chariot, entered a wide opening in the earth.
But the heroic king entered after him, and did not see
that boar, but saw in front of him a splendid castle. And he
sat down on the bank of a lake, and saw there a maiden, with
a hundred others attending on her, looking like an incarnation
of Rati. She came up to him and asked him the reason
of his coming there, and having conceived an affection for
him said to him, with tearful eyes :
" Alas ! What a place
1 So Tawney translates Anjanadri, but I can find no trace of such a
mountain. Dr Barnett thinks it is probably a fuller form of the name Anjana
" antimony "
which is given to the imaginary elephant of the regent of the
West, Varuna. See Amara-kosa, I, i, 2, 5. There are several mountains of the
name mentioned in the Puranas e.g. two in Jambu-dvipa and one in Gomedadvipa.
But they are on the earth, and cannot fall out of the sky, which is a
feat suitable for a Diggaja, or elephant of the sky quarters (see Mahabharata
xiii, 132), who stands normally in the middle of one of the quarters of space in
the sky. n.m.p.