The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story
being afraid, said, "What does that matter to you? Let me go; I have
business here." Then the thief said, "How can I, who am a thief,
let you go?" Hearing that, she replied, "Take my ornaments." The
thief answered her, "What do I care for those gems, fair one? I will
not surrender you, the ornament of the world, with your face like the
moonstone, your hair black like jet, your waist like a diamond, [320]
your limbs like gold, fascinating beholders with your ruby-coloured
feet."
When the thief said this, the helpless merchant's daughter told him
her story, and entreated him as follows, "Excuse me for a moment,
that I may keep my word, and as soon as I have done that, I will
quickly return to you, if you remain here. Believe me, my good man,
I will never break this true promise of mine." When the thief heard
that, he let her go, believing that she was a woman who would keep
her word, and he remained in that very spot, waiting for her return.
She, for her part, went to that merchant Dharmadatta. And when he
saw that she had come to that wood, he asked her how it happened, and
then, though he had longed for her, he said to her, after reflecting
a moment, "I am delighted at your faithfulness to your promise;
what have I to do with you, the wife of another? So go back, as you
came, before any one sees you." When he thus let her go, she said,
"So be it," and leaving that place, she went to the thief, who was
waiting for her in the road. He said to her, "Tell me what befell
you when you arrived at the trysting-place." So she told him how
the merchant let her go. Then the thief said, "Since this is so,
then I also will let you go, being pleased with your truthfulness:
return home with your ornaments!"
So he too let her go, and went with her to guard her, and she returned
to the house of her husband, delighted at having preserved her
honour. There the chaste woman entered secretly, and went delighted
to her husband; and he, when he saw her, questioned her; so she told
him the whole story. And Samudratta, perceiving that his good wife
had kept her word without losing her honour, assumed a bright and
cheerful expression, and welcomed her as a pure-minded woman, who had
not disgraced her family, and lived happily with her ever afterwards.
When the Vetála had told this story in the cemetery to king
Trivikramasena, he went on to say to him; "So tell me, king, which
was the really generous man of those three, the two merchants and
the thief? And if you know and do not tell, your head shall split
into a hundred pieces."
When the Vetála said this, the king broke silence, and said to him,
"Of those three the thief was the only really generous man, and not
either of the two merchants. For of course her husband let her go,
though she was so lovely and he had married her; how could a gentleman
desire to keep a wife that was attached to another? And the other
resigned her because his passion was dulled by time, and he was
afraid that her husband, knowing the facts, would tell the king the
next day. But the thief, a reckless evildoer, working in the dark,
was really generous, to let go a lovely woman, ornaments and all."
When the Vetála heard that, he left the shoulder of the king, and
returned to his own place, as before, and the king, with his great
perseverance no whit dashed, again set out, as before, to bring him.
NOTE.
This story is the same as the 19th of Campbell's West Highland Tales,
The Inheritance, Vol. II, pp. 16-18. Dr. Köhler, (Orient und Occident,
Vol. II, p. 317), compares the Story in the 1,001 Nights of Sultan
Akschid and his three sons. He tells us that it is also found in the
Turkish Tales, called The Forty Vazírs, in the Turkish Tútínámah, and
in Johann Andreæ's Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz. The form
of it best known to the general reader is probably the 5th story in
the Xth day of Boccacio's Decameron. The tale is no doubt originally
Buddhistic, and the king's cynical remarks a later addition. Dunlop
considers that Boccacio's story gave rise to Chaucer's Frankeleyne's
Tale, the 12th Canto of the Orlando Inamorato, and Beaumont and
Fletcher's Triumph of Honour.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
(Vetála 11.)
Then king Trivikramasena again went and took that Vetála from the
asoka-tree and put him on his shoulder, and set out with him; and as
he was going along, the Vetála on his shoulder said to him; "Listen,
king; I will tell you an interesting story."
Story of king Dharmadhvaja and his three very sensitive wives.
There lived of old in Ujjayiní a king of the name of Dharmadhvaja, he
had three wives, who were all daughters of kings, and whom he held very
dear. The first of them was called Indulekhá, the second Tárávalí, and
the third Mrigánkavatí; and they were all possessed of extraordinary
personal charms. And the successful king, who had conquered all his
enemies, lived happily, amusing himself with all those three queens.
Once on a time, when the festival of the spring-season had arrived, he
went with all those three wives to the garden to amuse himself. There
he beheld the creepers weighed down with flowers, looking like
Cupid's bows, with rows of bees for strings, strung for him by the
Spring. And the king, who resembled the mighty Indra, hearing the
notes which the cuckoos uttered on the sprays of the garden-trees,
like the edict of Love, the god of enjoyment, betook himself with his
wives to wine, which is the very life of that intoxication, by which
Cupid lives. And he joyed in drinking the liquor first tasted by them,
perfumed with their sighs, red as their bimba lips.
Then, as Indulekhá was playfully pulling the hair of the king,
a blue lotus leaped from her ear, and fell on her lap. Immediately
a wound was produced on the front of her thigh by the blow, and the
delicate princess exclaimed "Oh! Oh!" and fainted. When the king and
the attendants saw that, they were distracted with grief, but they
gradually brought her round with cold water and fanning. Then the
king took her to the palace, and had a bandage applied to the wound,
and treated her with preparations made by the physicians.
And at night, seeing that she was going on well, the king retired
with the second, Tárávalí, to an apartment on the roof of the palace
exposed to the rays of the moon. There the rays of the moon, entering
through the lattice, fell on the body of the queen, who was sleeping
by the king's side, where it was exposed by her garment blowing
aside. Immediately she woke up, exclaiming, "Alas! I am burnt," and
rose up from the bed rubbing her limbs. The king woke up in a state
of alarm, crying out, "What is the meaning of this?" Then he got
up and saw that blisters had been produced on the queen's body. And
the queen Tárávalí said to him when he questioned her, "The moon's
rays falling on my exposed body have done this to me." When she said
this and burst into tears, the king, being distressed, summoned her
attendants, who ran there in trepidation and alarm. And he had made
for her a bed of lotus-leaves, sprinkled with water, and sandal-wood
lotion applied to her body.
In the meanwhile his third wife Mrigánkavatí heard of it, and left
her palace to come to him. And when she had got into the open air,
she heard distinctly, as the night was still, the sound of a pestle
pounding rice in a distant house. The moment the gazelle-eyed one
heard it, she said, "Alas I am killed," and she sat down on the path,
shaking her hands in an agony of pain. Then the girl turned back, and
was conducted by her attendants to her own chamber, where she fell on
the bed, and groaned. And when her weeping attendants examined her,
they saw that her hands were covered with bruises, and looked like
lotuses upon which black bees had settled. So they went and told the
king. The king Dharmadhvaja arrived in a state of consternation,
and asked his beloved what it all meant. Then the tortured queen
showed him her hands, and said to him, "As soon as I heard the sound
of the pestle, these became covered with bruises." Then the king,
filled with surprise and despondency, had sandal-wood unguent and
other remedies applied to her hands, in order to allay the pain.
He reflected, "One of my queens has been wounded by the fall of a
lotus, the second has had her body burned even by the rays of the
moon, and alas! the third has got such terrible bruises produced on
her hands by the mere sound of a pestle. By a dispensation of fate
the excessive delicacy, which is the distinguishing excellence of
my queens, has now become in them all, at one and the same time,
a defect." Engaged in such reflections the king wandered round the
women's apartments, and the night of three watches passed for him as
tediously as if it had consisted of a hundred watches. But the next
morning, the physician and surgeons took measures, which caused him
soon to be comforted by the recovery of his wives.
When the Vetála had told this very wonderful story, he put this
question to king Trivikramasena from his seat on his shoulder: "Tell
me, king, which was the most delicate of those queens; and the curse
I before mentioned will take effect, if you know and do not say."
When the king heard that, he answered, "The most delicate of all was
the lady upon whose hand bruises were produced by merely hearing the
sound of the pestle, without touching it. But the other two were no
match for her, because the wound of the one and the blisters of the
other were produced by contact with the lotus and the rays of the
moon respectively."
When the king had said this, the Vetála again left his shoulder,
and returned to his own place, and the persevering king again set
out to fetch him.
NOTE.
Rohde in his Griechische Novellistik, p. 62, compares with this a story
told by Timæus of a Sybarite, who saw a husbandman hoeing a field, and
contracted a rupture from it. Another Sybarite, to whom he told his
piteous tale, got ear-ache from hearing it. Oesterley in his German
translation of the Baitál Pachísí, p. 199, refers us to Lancereau,
No. 5, pp. 396-399, and Babington's Vetála Cadai, No. 11, p. 58. He
points out that Grimm, in his Kindermärchen, 3, p. 238, quotes a
similar incident from the travels of the three sons of Giaffar. Out
of four princesses, one faints because a rose-twig is thrown into
her face among some roses, a second shuts her eyes in order not to
see the statue of a man, a third says "Go away, the hairs in your
fur-cloak run into me," and the fourth covers her face, fearing that
some of the fish in a tank may belong to the male sex. He also quotes
a striking parallel from the Élite des contes du Sieur d'Ouville. Four
ladies dispute as to which of them is the most delicate. One has been
lame for three months owing to a rose-leaf having fallen on her foot,
another has had three ribs broken by a sheet in her bed having been
crumpled, a third has held her head on one side for six weeks owing
to one half of her head having three or four more hairs on it than
the other, a fourth has broken a blood-vessel by a slight movement,
and the rupture cannot be healed without breaking the whole limb.
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
(Vetála 12)
Then king Trivikramasena again went to the asoka-tree, and recovered
the Vetála, and placed him on his shoulder, and set out with him again
silently, as before. Then the Vetála again said to him from his seat
on his shoulder; "King, I love you much because you are so indomitable,
so listen, I will tell you this delightful story to amuse you."
Story of king Yasahketu, his Vidyádharí wife, and his faithful
minister.
In the land of Anga there was a young king named Yasahketu, like a
second and unburnt god of love come to earth to conceal his body. [321]