Eagerly the sons of Sagara proceeded to search the entire earth, but the horse
was nowhere to be found. They even started digging the earth as for buried treasure, and
in their anxiety respected neither place nor person and only succeeded in earning the
hatred of all they met. The horse was not to be found; and when they reported their
failure to the King, he bade them ran sack the nether world also. The princes
did as they were told and in paataala they saw the horse grazing in a corner of an
aashrama, not far from the place where Sage Kapila who was Vishnu sat in meditation.
The princes at once jumped to the
conclusion that they had not only found the stolen horse but the thief also, and they
rushed on Kapila shouting, "Here is the thief pretending to be a yogi."
Kapila thus disturbed opened his eyes and the sixty thousand princes were reduced to a
heap of ashes. Indra, the real thief, had artfully left the horse here with this very
intent. |
