Vikramaditya

“ So let us pass by the cogitations of the historian as to what nameless king minted the coin, and listen with renewed confidence to the tale told by a childish voice of how King Vikramadîtya slew the foul fiend.
What does it matter whether he was Vikramadîtya or another? Foul fiends must always be killed; as well by a nameless king, provided he be a "Great Saviour."
But one point more requires a few words ere we pass on--the extent to which Greek culture influenced India. ”

“ VIKRAMADITYA, a legendary Hindu king of Uzjain, who is supposed to have given his name to the Vikram Samvat, the era which is used all over northern India, except in Bengal, and at whose court the “nine gems” of Sanskrit literature are also supposed to have flourished. The Vikram era is reckoned from the vernal equinox of the year 57 B.C., but there is no evidence that that date corresponds with any event in the life of an actual king. ”

“ When the king of Kalinga heard this, he was very angry, and he said, “Who is this king Vikramáditya? Does he presume to give me orders and ask for my daughter as a tribute? Blinded with pride he shall be cast down.” When the ambassador heard this from Kalingasena, he said to him, “How can you, being a servant, dare to set yourself up against your master? You do not know your place. What, madman, do you wish to be shrivelled like a moth in the fire of his wrath?”
When the ambassador had said this, he returned and communicated to king Vikramáditya that speech of Kalingasena’s. ”

“ He reigned 25 years, but giving himself up to effeminacy, his country was invaded by Shakaditya, a king from the highlands of Kumaon. Vikramaditya, in the fourteenth year of his reign, pretended to espouse the cause of Raja-pal, attacked and destroyed Shakaditya, and ascended the throne of Delhi. His capital was Avanti, or Ujjayani, the modern Ujjain. ”

“ When the warder had said this, king Vikramáditya made him inform Śanvarasiddhi of all the circumstances connected with the matter, and honoured him with a present of much wealth, and bade him shew him the way, and then he seemed to bequeath his own burning heat to the rays of the sun, his paleness to the clouds, and his thinness to the waters of the rivers,* [12] and having become free from sorrow, set out at once, escorted by a small force, for the dwelling-place of his beloved. ”

“ And I, having been thus fortunate, lived there for a long time with that wife, and that son, and then returned to this city of Ujjayiní.
" So you see, king, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands, and it is not the case that all women are always bad." When king Vikramáditya had heard this speech from the mouth of Múladeva, he rejoiced with his ministers. Thus hearing, and seeing, and doing wonders, that king Vikramáditya* [15] conquered and enjoyed all the divisions of the earth." ”

“ As the reign of this king determines an important period in the history of India, so his conquest of Nepal indicates a useful landmark in the records of the State.
Vikramaditya is to the Hindus what Alfred the Great is to the English people, and innumerable tales and legends, current to this day, familiarize his name to the rich and poor, the learned and the ignorant, the high and the low. He favoured the Hindu religion, but never persecuted the Buddhists. Personally he seems to have left few records of his occupation of Nepal, but indirectly his association with the country was significant. ”

“ At least, so we explain them; but people do not worship abstract powers.
[196] The residence of Indra, king of heaven, built by Wishwa-Karma, the architect of the gods.
[197] In other words, to the present day, whenever a Hindu novelist, romancer, or tale writer seeks a peg upon which to suspend the texture of his story, he invariably pitches upon the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of that Eastern King Arthur, Vikramaditya, shortly called Vikram. ”

“ On the instant Gandharva-Sena appeared to him, and thanking him for undoing the spell announced that he was about to return to heaven, but that his wife was with child by him, and that she would bring forth a son who would bear the name of Vikramaditya and be endowed with the strength of a thousand elephants. The deserted wife was filled with sorrow at his departure, and died in giving birth to Vikramaditya.365
Stories of the type of Beauty and the Beast, which tell how human beings are married to beasts or to animals which temporarily assume human form. ”

“ Whilst Vikramaditya lived, Magha, another king, caused to be written a poem called after his name For each verse he is said to have paid to learned men a gold piece, which amounted to a total of 5,280l.—a large sum in those days, which preceded those of Paradise Lost. About the same period Karnata, a third king, was famed for patronizing the learned men who rose to honour at Vikram’s court. Dhavaka, a poet of nearly the same period, received from King Shriharsha the magnificent present of 10,000l. ”

“ Of the progress and term of this period of the world, considered in reference to the history of mankind, the Indians entertain a very simple notion. They believe that the condition of mankind will become at first much worse, but will be afterwards ameliorated. The regular historical epoch when the chronology of India begins to acquire greater certainty, and from which indeed it is ordinarily computed, is the age of King Vikramaditya, who reigned in the more civilized part of India, somewhat earlier than the Emperor Augustus in the West, perhaps about sixty years before our era. ”

“ Vikramâdityas afterwards kills the king of the demons in battle, in which it is remarkable that as many new demons arise to combat him as there are pieces into which the hero cuts the demon, until the hero multiplies himself in his turn, and to every demon opposes a lion sprung from his own body. ”

“ The main thesis of Professor Max Müller is, that in the middle of the sixth century A.D. the reign of a King Vikramāditya of Ujjain, with whom tradition connected the names of Kālidāsa and other distinguished authors, was the golden age of Indian court poetry. This renaissance theory is based on Fergusson's ingenious chronological hypothesis that a supposed King Vikrama of Ujjain, having expelled the Scythians from India, in commemoration of his victory founded the Vikrama era in 544 A.D., dating its commencement back 600 years to 57 B.C. The epigraphical researches Of Mr. ”

“ The young Vikramâdityas passes his infancy in the forests, where he learns all the arts, not excluding the art of thieving, taught him by the most experienced robbers, as well as every kind of mercantile fraud; by cheating, he becomes possessed of an enchanted gem which was in the hip of a dead man, and of a child who has the faculty of understanding the language of the wolves, and who calls himself son of the wolves, but was, in fact, born by the roadside of the maid who had eaten the rest of the cake ”

“ Who art thou that darest to stop or stay me?’
‘That question is easily answered,’ cried Prithwi Pala the giant, in his roaring voice; ‘the gods have sent me to protect Ujjayani. If thou be really Raja Vikram, prove thyself a man: first fight with me, and then return to thine own.’
The warrior king cried ‘Sadhu!’ wanting nothing better. He girt his girdle tight round his loins, summoned his opponent into the empty space beyond the gate, told him to stand on guard, and presently began to devise some means of closing with or running in upon him. ”

“ While Vikramâditja continued to rule over his subjects in justice, and to make them prosperous and happy, another mighty king entered Nirvâna. As he left no son, and as there was no one of his family left, nor any one with any title to be his heir, a youth of the people was elected to fill the throne. The same night that he had been installed on the throne, however, he came to die. The next day another youth was elected, and he also died the same night. And so it was the next night, and the next, and yet no one could divine of what malady all these kings died. ”

“ Enjoy the present hour, ‘tis thine; be this, O man, thy law; Who e’er resew the yester? Who the morrow e’er foresaw?
And this highly philosophical axiom—
Eat, drink, and love—the rest’s not worth a fillip.
“By means of which he hoped, Raja Vikram!” said the demon, not heeding his royal carrier’s “ughs” and “poohs,” “to become in course of time almost as clever as his mistress.”
Padmavati, being, as you have seen, a maiden of superior mind, was naturally more smitten by her lover’s dulness than by any other of his qualities; she adored it, it was such a contrast to herself. ”

“ Res. i. 284, though the original stone has since been lost, in which a curious legend is told of him, showing that as early as A.D. 948 (fixed by experts for the date of the inscription) an undisputed tradition taught that the oldest Sanskrit dictionary was written by one of the nine jewels of Vikramâditja's throne. This legend says, "This Amaradeva, one of the nine jewels of Vikramâditja's throne, and his first minister, was a man of great talent and learning. Once, when on a journey, this famous man found in the uninhabited forest the place where Vishnu was incarnate in the person of Buddha. ”

“ One day Vikramâditja came to his mother, and said to her, "Beloved mother! Live on here in tranquillity, while I, in company with Schalû, will go to the capital where my father, the immortal Gandharva, reigned, and see what is the fate of our people, and how I may recover the inheritance."
But Udsessküleng-Chatun made answer, "Vikramâditja, beloved son! Is not the way long, and beset with evil men, who are so many and so bold? How then wilt thou ever arrive, or escape their wiles?" ”

“ As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his ideas who sang,
Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn,
Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!
For a man versed in the Lila Shastra [78] can soon turn a woman’s indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to love. In which predicament it is the old thing over again, and it ends in the pure Asat [79] or nonentity.
‘Which of these two birds, the jay or the parrot, had dipped deeper into human nature, mighty King Vikram?’ asked the demon in a wheedling tone of voice. ”

“ Quoth Vikram to the young merchant severely—for his suspicions were now thoroughly roused—“Why hast thou given to us all this wealth?”
“O great king,” replied Mal Deo, demurely, “it is written in the scriptures (shastra) ‘Of Ceremony’ that ‘we must not go empty-handed into the presence of the following persons, namely, Rajas, spiritual teachers, judges, young maidens, and old women whose daughters we would marry.’ But why, O Vikram, cost thou speak of one ruby only, since in each of the fruits which I have laid at thy feet there is a similar jewel?” ”

“ History tells us another tale. The god Indra and the King of Dhara gave the kingdom to Bhartari-hari, another son of Gandhar-ba-Sena, by a handmaiden. For some time, the brothers lived together; but presently they quarrelled. Vikram being dismissed from court, wandered from place to place in abject poverty, and at one time hired himself as a servant to a merchant living in Guzerat. At length, Bhartari-hari, disgusted with the world on account of the infidelity of his wife, to whom he was ardently attached, became a religious devotee, and left the kingdom to its fate. ”

“ Secondly, they cast enmity between thee and thy brother, thus dooming him to an untimely end. Thirdly, they are now working thy ruin. The anchorite’s design is to offer up a king and a king’s son to his patroness Durga, and by [Pg 30] virtue of such devotional act he will obtain the sovereignty of the whole world!
‘But I have promised, O Vikram, to save thee, if such be the will of Fortune, from impending destruction. Therefore hearken well unto my words. Distrust them that dwell amongst the dead, and remember that it is lawful and right to strike off his head that would slay thee. ”

“ Another old Hindu story-book relates, in the popular fairy-book style, the wondrous adventures of the hero and demigod, the great Gandharba-Sena. That son of Indra, who was also the father of Vikramajit, the subject of this and another collection, offended the ruler of the firmament by his fondness for a certain nymph, and was doomed to wander over earth under the form of a donkey. Through the interposition of the gods, however, he was permitted to become a man during the hours of darkness, thus comparing with the English legend―
Amundeville is lord by day, But the monk is lord by night. ”

“ But when Vikramâditja had made an end of the Schimnus, and resumed his own form again, he made a great offering of incense, and the earth resumed her stability; the people were called back to life, and all was gladness and thanksgiving. All the people, and King Galischa at their head, acknowledged Vikramâditja as their lawful sovereign, and he ascended the throne of his father Gandharva. ”

“ What lover, O warrior king Vikram, would have hesitated, under such circumstances, to assure the Pandit that he was the most innocent, earnest, and well-intentioned being in the Three Worlds?
The Brahman’s son, at least, lost no time in so doing. Hence the simple-minded philosopher put one of the pills into the young man’s mouth, warning him on no account to swallow it, and took the other into his own mouth. Upon which Manaswi became a sprightly young maid, and Muldev was changed to a reverend and decrepid senior, not fewer than eighty years old. ”