Not in This Birth

As he rode into the city he saw the people stricken, then astonished, then joyful, embracing one another and crying, Long life! Your enemies are dead! His parents and kinsmen blessed him. He asked what had happened, and his father told him.

When he heard that Madālasā was dead he stood before his parents in the middle of an ocean of shame and grief. She heard that I was dead and gave up her life, he thought, and I am alive. Shame on my hard heart! Then he steadied himself. If I die for her, that will not help her. To go about weeping Ah, my beloved! is not worthy of a man. My life belongs to my father, to serve him, and to the destruction of his enemies. What I can give up is the pleasure of women, and that I will give up.

He poured water for her and performed the rites for the dead, and then he made his vow: If that slender one, Madālasā, is not to be my wife, then in this birth no other woman will share my life. Without the fawn-eyed daughter of the gandharva I will enjoy no woman. This is my true word. Leaving her, my true wife in dharma, who moved with an elephant's stately grace, I will take no other. This truth I have spoken.

From that day he gave up all pleasure in women and passed his time only with friends of his own age.

That is the one great thing still to be done for him, Father, the nāga princes said. Who could do it? Even the Lords would find it hard.