द्वितीय राजतरङ्गिणी (जोनराज - कल्हणोत्तर मध्यकालीन कश्मीर का प्रामाणिक इतिहास)

374 KINGS OF KASHMÍRA.
their lives, casting aside their love for husband, for son,
and the service due towards their parents. The hungry
people ate twice or thrice or four times during day, and
yet again wandered about like sprites in quest of food.
Abdāla Malleka and others were bent on doing acts of
virtue at this time, they cooked a large quantity of grain
and fed the people every day. Men died of hunger and
thirst in villages, in the city, and in the king's highway,
and lay like sprites, and uncounted. Some people
saved their lives by selling their stores of silver and
baser metals, and by living on herbs, walnuts, and heart-
pease. The calamity caused by the famine was greater
than the ravages done by the enemies, even as a bad boil
is more troublesome than the disease of the throat or of
the eye. The famine became more severe at the end of
the month of Jyaishṭha, in the year 10, than what it
had been in the year 9, and spread itself all over the
country. Then a good season, like the minister of
king Food, brightened all sides with small seeds as with
lamps, and came to struggle with Famine. As wheat
grew on stocks and rose from the ground, and looked
like a terrace, its grains welcomed, as it were, the survi-
vors. It seemed as if when king Food saw his army
overpowered, he came himself to conquer the powerful
Famine which was like a mighty Rākṣhasa. He spread
out his great army of vegetables and rice and coarse
grain, and the walnuts were the stones he shot from his
machines. He conquered Famine, and then took his