विक्रम चरित (उज्जैन सम्राट् विक्रमादित्य - पराक्रम, न्याय एवं ३२ पुतलियों की कथा सटीक)

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be encompassed. But come, hasten to grant my request. Do you fully comprehend the nature of my speech?" Soometra, touched with his appearance and friendly disposi- tion, smiled at the conclusion of his address, and did not hesitate to allow him a chaste embrace, after which the youth disappeared. The father, after bathing and perform- ing his ablutions, returned to where he had left his daughter, and was surprised at not finding her there, but perceived her at a distance coming towards him. She appeared to him, though retaining the same line of features, to have suddenly advanced to womanhood; but on coming nearer, he found that she was in her former condition of infancy. The father asked her why she had left her place, and to his horror and indignation she told him all that had occur- red, without concealing a single circumstance. He became very much dejected when he thought of the disgrace that would probably fall on him; though he doubted whether any injury had been inflicted upon his child, as she was still an infant. Then again he recalled the circumstance which he beheld as his daughter advanced to him from the distance: she then appeared to have all at once grown into a woman, and on nearing him had as suddenly resumed her natural shape of a child. He was greatly puzzled at all this. "God alone knows," said he, "what this illusion means: my eyes could not have deceived me, and yet how can I account for the strange phenomenon?" As he was unable to solve the mystery he led his daughter home. Four months after the occurrence above narrated, the brahmin's daughter, suddenly and against all precedent in the order of nature, shot up into a young woman, and at the same time showed every sign of being with child. When the neighbours came to know of her situation, it created a deal of scandal, which was productive of great pain to her father, for much stress was laid on her supposed infamy and gross violation of virtue. The unpleasant intelligence soon reached the ears of king Somekaunt,---that a brahmin's daughter had become