The Katha Sarit Sagara or Ocean of the Streams of Story Part 54

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIV.

(Vetala 10.)

Then Trivikramasena went and took the Vetala from the asoka-tree, and put him on his shoulder once more, and set out; and as he was going along, the Vetala said from the top of his shoulder, "You are weary, king, so listen to this tale that is capable of dispelling weariness."

Story of Madanasena and her rash promise.

There was an excellent king of the name of Virabahu, who imposed his orders on the heads of all kings: he had a splendid city named Anangapura, and in it there lived a rich merchant, named Arthadatta; that merchant prince had for elder child a son named Dhanadatta, and his younger child was a pearl of maidens, named Madanasena.

One day, as she was playing with her companions in her own garden, a young merchant, named Dharmadatta, a friend of her brother's, saw her. When he saw that maiden, who with the full streams of her beauty, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s like pitchers half-revealed, and three wrinkles like waves, resembled a lake for the elephant of youth to plunge in in sport, he was at once robbed of his senses by the arrows of love, that fell upon him in showers. He thought to himself, "Alas, this maiden, illuminated with this excessive beauty, has been framed by Mara, as a keen arrow to cleave asunder my heart." While, engaged in such reflections, he watched her long, the day pa.s.sed away for him, as if he were a chakravaka. Then Madanasena entered her house, and grief at no longer beholding her entered the breast of Dharmadatta. And the sun sank red into the western main, as if inflamed with the fire of grief at seeing her no more. And the moon, that was surpa.s.sed by the lotus of her countenance, knowing that that fair-faced one had gone in for the night, slowly mounted upward.

In the meanwhile Dharmadatta went home, and thinking upon that fair one, he remained tossing to and fro on his bed, smitten by the rays of the moon. And though his friends and relations eagerly questioned him, he gave them no answer, being bewildered by the demon of love. And in the course of the night he at length fell asleep, though with difficulty, and still he seemed to behold and court that loved one in a dream; to such lengths did his longing carry him. And in the morning he woke up, and went and saw her once more in that very garden, alone and in privacy, waiting for her attendant. So he went up to her, longing to embrace her, and falling at her feet, he tried to coax her with words tender from affection. But she said to him with great earnestness, "I am a maiden, betrothed to another, I cannot now be yours, for my father has bestowed me on the merchant Samudradatta, and I am to be married in a few days. So depart quietly, let not any one see you; it might cause mischief." But Dharmadatta said to her, "Happen what may, I cannot live without you." When the merchant's daughter heard this, she was afraid that he would use force to her, so she said to him, "Let my marriage first be celebrated here, let my father reap the long-desired fruit of bestowing a daughter in marriage; then I will certainly visit you, for your love has gained my heart." When he heard this, he said, "I love not a woman that has been embraced by another man; does the bee delight in a lotus on which another bee has settled?" When he said this to her, she replied, "Then I will visit you as soon as I am married, and afterwards I will go to my husband." But though she made this promise, he would not let her go without further a.s.surance, so the merchant's daughter confirmed the truth of her promise with an oath. Then he let her go, and she entered her house in low spirits.

And when the lucky day had arrived, and the auspicious ceremony of marriage had taken place, she went to her husband's house and spent that day in merriment, and then retired with him. But she repelled her husband's caresses with indifference, and when he began to coax her, she burst into tears. He thought to himself, "Of a truth she cares not for me," and said to her, "Fair one, if you do not love me, I do not want you; go to your darling, whoever he may be." When she heard this, she said slowly, with downcast face, "I love you more than my life, but hear what I have to say. Rise up cheerfully, and promise me immunity from punishment; take an oath to that effect, my husband, in order that I may tell you."

When she said this, her husband reluctantly consented, and then she went on to say with shame, despondency, and fear; "A young man of the name of Dharmadatta, a friend of my brother's, saw me once alone in our garden, and smitten with love he detained me; and when he was preparing to use force, I being anxious to secure for my father the merit of giving a daughter in marriage, and to avoid all scandal, made this agreement with him; 'When I am married, I will pay you a visit, before I go to my husband;' so I must now keep my word, permit me, my husband; I will pay him a visit first, and then return to you, for I cannot transgress the law of truth which I have observed from my childhood." When Samudradatta had been thus suddenly smitten by this speech of hers, as by a down-lighting thunderbolt, being bound by the necessity of keeping his word, he reflected for a moment as follows; "Alas! she is in love with another man, she must certainly go; why should I make her break her word? Let her depart! Why should I be so eager to have her for a wife?" After he had gone through this train of thought, he gave her leave to go where she would; and she rose up, and left her husband's house.

In the meanwhile the cold-rayed moon ascended the great eastern mountain, as it were the roof of a palace, and the nymph of the eastern quarter smiled, touched by his finger. Then, though the darkness was still embracing his beloved herbs in the mountain caves and the bees were settling on another cl.u.s.ter of k.u.mudas, a certain thief saw Madanasena, as she was going along alone at night, and rus.h.i.+ng upon her, seized her by the hem of her garment. He said to her, "Who are you, and where are you going?" When he said this, she, 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, a.s.sumed 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 Vetala 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 Vetala 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 pa.s.sion 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 Vetala 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. Kohler, (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 Vazirs, in the Turkish Tutinamah, and in Johann Andreae'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 Lx.x.xV.

(Vetala 11.)

Then king Trivikramasena again went and took that Vetala from the asoka-tree and put him on his shoulder, and set out with him; and as he was going along, the Vetala 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 Ujjayini 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 Indulekha, the second Taravali, and the third Mrigankavati; 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 G.o.d 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 Indulekha 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, Taravali, 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 Taravali 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 Mrigankavati 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 Vetala 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 Vetala 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 Timaeus 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 Baital Pachisi, p. 199, refers us to Lancereau, No. 5, pp. 396-399, and Babington's Vetala Cadai, No. 11, p. 58. He points out that Grimm, in his Kindermarchen, 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 s.e.x. He also quotes a striking parallel from the elite 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 Lx.x.xVI.

(Vetala 12)

Then king Trivikramasena again went to the asoka-tree, and recovered the Vetala, and placed him on his shoulder, and set out with him again silently, as before. Then the Vetala 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 Vidyadhari wife, and his faithful minister.

In the land of Anga there was a young king named Yasahketu, like a second and unburnt G.o.d of love come to earth to conceal his body. [321]