once, the Daughter of the Snow exclaimed: See, there is the
mirage! Let us descend, and sit for a little while upon the sand: for I
love to watch this wonder, which resembles in its far faint blue the
colour of a dream. And accordingly, to do her pleasure, Maheshwara sank
softly to the earth, settling on it like a cloud gently resting on a
hill.

So as they looked, after a while, that slender goddess said again:
Surely it is a shame, and well may the poor antelopes be mistaken and
deceived. For who could believe yonder water to be only an illusion? And
when the eyes of even gods are bewildered by the cheat, how much more
the eyes of thirsty and unreflecting little deer!

Then the Moony-crested deity said slowly: O Daughter of the Snow, thy
own reflection on this beautiful illusion is the truth. And yet, well
were it for the world, were its illusion limited only to its eyes, not
extending, as it actually does, to its understanding also. For this
deceptive picture on the sand is far inferior in power and importance to
the bewildering delusion of this world below, fluttering about whose
shifting dancing light, like moths about a wind-blown torch, men singe
their silly souls, and burning off their wings, drop helpless, maimed
and mutilated, into the black gulf of birth and death, and lose
emancipation; till, after countless ages, their wings begin to sprout
and grow again, under the influence of works. Yet they who after all
emerge, and soar away, unburdened even by an atom of the guilt that
weighs them down, and brings them back into the vortex of rebirth, are
very few. And yonder bones, now lying in the sand, could they but rise
and speak, would be a proof of what I say.

And the goddess looked, and saw, close by, a little heap of bones, that
lay half-buried in the sand. And she said with curiosity: Whose are the
bones, and how are they a proof of thy consideration?

And Maheshwara replied: These are bones, not of a man, but of a camel,
that perished in the desert long ago. For into this body of a camel
fell the soul of which I spoke, in punishment of crimes committed in the
birth before, in the body of a man; who, blinded by passion, slew three
of his fellow mortals; as, if thou wilt, I will tell thee while we sit,
watching the illusion of the senses, that so closely represents the
illusion of the souls of the lovers in the tale.

II

Know, then, that once upon a time, long ago, all the gods had assembled
in th