The Ocean of Story Vol. II

On the very first page of this volume we are told how the amorous king, Udayana of Vatsa, absorbed in the delights of his harem, neglected the responsibilities of his rule, and again, on page 55, a similar story is told of King Adityasena of Ujjayini. For India such stories are only too true to life. Over and over again does history tell us how kings have been destroyed, and how India has been lost, through the love of women. Somadeva tells us how, in each of the two cases mentioned by him his ministers succeeded in arousing the royal voluptuary to a sense of his kingly duties, and we have a pretty version of the same idea for modern times in the well-known story of the poet Vihari and King Jai Singh Mirza of Amber, who reigned in the seventeenth century.