CHAPTER LXXXV

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(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.

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