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

THE MAGICAL COMBAT 27
so were Vasavadatta, Padmavati and the rest. And the
citizens, and the king's ministers Yaugandharayana and the
others, together with their sons Marubhuti and the rest, were
altogether distracted.
Then the hermit Narada, surrounded with a circle of
light, descended there from heaven, like a second sun. The
King of Vatsa offered him the arghya, and the hermit said to
"
Your son has been carried off by a Vidyadhari to her
him :
country, but he will soon return ; and I have been sent by
Siva to cheer you up." And after this prelude he went on to
tell the king of Vegavatl's proceedings exactly as they took
place. Then the king recovered his spirits and the hermit
disappeared.
In the meanwhile Vegavati carried Naravahanadatta
through the air to the mountain Ashadhapura. And Mana-
savega, hearing of it, hastened there to kill them both. Then
Vegavati engaged with her brother in a struggle which was
remarkable for a great display of magic power ;
for a woman
values her lover as her life, and much more than her own
relations. Then she assumed by the might of her magic a
terrible form of Bhairava, and at once striking Manasavega
senseless, she placed him on the mountain of Agni. And she
took Naravahanadatta, whom at the beginning of the contest
she had deposited in the care of one of her sciences, 1 and
placed him in a dry well in the city of the Gandharvas, to keep
him. And when he was there, she said to him :
" Remain
here a little while, my husband ; good fortune will befall you
here. And do not despond in your heart, O man appointed
to a happy lot ! for the sovereignty over all the Vidyadharas
is to be yours. But I must leave this for the present, to
appease my sciences, impaired by my resistance to my elder
brother. However, I will return to you soon." When the
Vidyadhari Vegavati had said this, she departed somewhere
or other.
MS.
1 Two of the India Office MSS. read haste. So also the Sanskrit College