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Vikram and the Vampire: Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance

by Sir Richard Francis Burton · English · Gutenberg #2400 · 465,916 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Vikram and the Vampire: Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance

Author: Sir Richard Francis Burton

Editor: Lady Isabel Burton


        
Release date: November 1, 2000 [eBook #2400]
                Most recently updated: November 2, 2016

Language: English

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VIKRAM AND THE VAMPIRE

By Sir Richard F. Burton

Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance

Edited by his Wife Isabel Burton

  “Les fables, loin de grandir les hommes, la Nature et Dieu,
  rapetssent tout.”
   Lamartine (Milton)

  “One who had eyes saw it; the blind will not understand it.
  A poet, who is a boy, he has perceived it; he who understands it
                    will be
    his sire’s sire.”--Rig-Veda (I.164.16).



Preface

Preface to the First (1870) Edition

Introduction

THE VAMPIRE’S FIRST STORY. In which a Man deceives a Woman

THE VAMPIRE’S SECOND STORY. Of the Relative Villany of Men and Woman

THE VAMPIRE’S THIRD STORY. Of a High-minded Family

THE VAMPIRE’S FOURTH STORY. Of a Woman who told the Truth

THE VAMPIRE’S FIFTH STORY. Of the Thief who Laughed and Wept

THE VAMPIRE’S SIXTH STORY. In which Three Men dispute about a Woman

THE VAMPIRE’S SEVENTH STORY. Showing the exceeding Folly of many wise
Fools

THE VAMPIRE’S EIGHTH STORY. Of the Use and Misuse of Magic Pills

THE VAMPIRE’S NINTH STORY. Showing that a Man’s Wife belongs not to his
body but to his Head

THE VAMPIRE’S TENTH STORY. Of the Marvellous Delicacy of Three Queens

THE VAMPIRE’S ELEVENTH STORY. Which puzzles Raja Vikram

Conclusion




PREFACE

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of
a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead
bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit,
and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which
inspired the “Golden Ass” of Apuleius, Boccacio’s “Decamerone,” the
“Pentamerone,” and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.

The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King Arthur of
the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings
to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties
King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence
of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series
of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on
Indian customs and manners. It also alludes to that state, which induces
Hindu devotees to allow themselves to be buried alive, and to appear
dead for weeks or months, and then to return to life again; a curious
state of mesmeric catalepsy, into which they work themselves by
concentrating the mind and abstaining from food--a specimen of which I
have given a practical illustration in the Life of Sir Richard Burton.

The following translation is rendered peculiarly; valuable and
interesting by Sir Richard Burton’s intimate knowledge of the language.
To all who understand the ways of the East, it is as witty, and as full
of what is popularly called “chaff” as it is possible to be. There is
not a dull page in it, and it will especially please those who delight
in the weird and supernatural, the grotesque, and the wild life.

My husband only gives eleven of the best tales, as it was thought the
translation would prove more interesting in its abbreviated form.

ISABEL BURTON.

August 18th, 1893.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST (1870) EDITION.

“THE genius of Eastern nations,” says an established and respectable
authority, “was, from the earliest times, much turned towards invention
and the love of fiction. The Indians, the Persians, and the Arabians,
were all famous for their fables. Amongst the ancient Greeks we hear
of the Ionian and Milesian tales, but they have now perished, and,
from every account we hear of them, appear to have been loose and
indelicate.” Similarly, the classical dictionaries define “Milesiae
fabulae” to be “licentious themes,” “stories of an amatory or mirthful
nature,” or “ludicrous and indecent plays.” M. Deriege seems indeed
to confound them with the “Moeurs du Temps” illustrated with artistic
gouaches, when he says, “une de ces fables milesiennes, rehaussees de
peintures, que la corruption romaine recherchait alors avec une folle
ardeur.”

My friend, Mr. Richard Charnock, F.A.S.L., more correctly defines
Milesian fables to have been originally “certain tales or novels,
composed by Aristides of Miletus “; gay in matter and graceful in
manner. “They were translated into Latin by the historian Sisenna, the
friend of Atticus, and they had a great success at Rome. Plutarch, in
his life of Crassus, tells us that after the defeat of Carhes (Carrhae?)
some Milesiacs were found in the baggage of the Roman prisoners. The
Greek text; and the Latin translation have long been lost. The only
surviving fable is the tale of Cupid and Psyche,[1] which Apuleius calls
‘Milesius sermo,’ and it makes us deeply regret the disappearance of the
others.” Besides this there are the remains of Apollodorus and
Conon, and a few traces to be found in Pausanias, Athenaeus, and the
scholiasts.

I do not, therefore, agree with Blair, with the dictionaries, or with M.
Deriege. Miletus, the great maritime city of Asiatic Ionia, was of old
the meeting-place of the East and the West. Here the Phoenician trader
from the Baltic would meet the Hindu wandering to Intra, from Extra,
Gangem; and the Hyperborean would step on shore side by side with the
Nubian and the Aethiop. Here was produced and published for the use of
the then civilized world, the genuine Oriental apologue, myth and tale
combined, which, by amusing narrative and romantic adventure, insinuates
a lesson in morals or in humanity, of which we often in our days must
fail to perceive the drift. The book of Apuleius, before quoted, is
subject to as many discoveries of recondite meaning as is Rabelais.
As regards the licentiousness of the Milesian fables, this sign of
semi-civilization is still inherent in most Eastern books of the
description which we call “light literature,” and the ancestral
tale-teller never collects a larger purse of coppers than when he
relates the worst of his “aurei.” But this looseness, resulting from
the separation of the sexes, is accidental, not necessary. The following
collection will show that it can be dispensed with, and that there is
such a thing as comparative purity in Hindu literature. The author,
indeed, almost always takes the trouble to marry his hero and his
heroine, and if he cannot find a priest, he generally adopts
an exceedingly left-hand and Caledonian but legal rite called
“gandharbavivaha.[2]”

The work of Apuleius, as ample internal evidence shows, is borrowed from
the East. The groundwork of the tale is the metamorphosis of Lucius
of Corinth into an ass, and the strange accidents which precede his
recovering the human form.

Another old Hindu story-book relates, in the popular fairy-book
style, the wondrous adventures of the hero and demigod, the great
Gandharba-Sena. That son of Indra, who was also the father of
Vikramajit, the subject of this and another collection, offended the
ruler of the firmament by his fondness for a certain nymph, and was
doomed to wander over earth under the form of a donkey. Through the
interposition of the gods, however, he was permitted to become a man
during the hours of darkness, thus comparing with the English legend--

          Amundeville is lord by day,
          But the monk is lord by night.

Whilst labouring under this curse, Gandharba-Sena persuaded the King
of Dhara to give him a daughter in marriage, but it unfortunately so
happened that at the wedding hour he was unable to show himself in any
but asinine shape. After bathing, however, he proceeded to the assembly,
and, hearing songs and music, he resolved to give them a specimen of his
voice.

The guests were filled with sorrow that so beautiful a virgin should be
married to a donkey. They were afraid to express their feelings to the
king, but they could not refrain from smiling, covering their mouths
with their garments. At length some one interrupted the general silence
and said:

“O king, is this the son of Indra? You have found a fine bridegroom; you
are indeed happy; don’t delay the marriage; delay is improper in doing
good; we never saw so glorious a wedding! It is true that we once heard
of a camel being married to a jenny-ass; when the ass, looking up to the
camel, said, ‘Bless me, what a bridegroom!’ and the camel, hearing the
voice of the ass, exclaimed, ‘Bless me, what a musical voice!’ In that
wedding, however, the bride and the bridegroom were equal; but in this
marriage, that such a bride should have such a bridegroom is truly
wonderful.”

Other Brahmans then present said:

“O king, at the marriage hour, in sign of joy the sacred shell is blown,
but thou hast no need of that” (alluding to the donkey’s braying).

The women all cried out:

“O my mother![3] what is this? at the time of marriage to have an ass!
What a miserable thing! What! will he give that angelic girl in wedlock
to a donkey?”

At length Gandharba-Sena, addressing the king in Sanskrit, urged him to
perform his promise. He reminded his future father-in-law that there is
no act more meritorious than speaking truth; that the mortal frame is
a mere dress, and that wise men never estimate the value of a person by
his clothes. He added that he was in that shape from the curse of his
sire, and that during the night he had the body of a man. Of his being
the son of Indra there could be no doubt.

Hearing the donkey thus speak Sanskrit, for it was never known that an
ass could discourse in that classical tongue, the minds of the people
were changed, and they confessed that, although he had an asinine form
he was unquestionably the son of Indra. The king, therefore, gave him
his daughter in marriage.[4] The metamorphosis brings with it many
misfortunes and strange occurrences, and it lasts till Fate in the
author’s hand restores the hero to his former shape and honours.

Gandharba-Sena is a quasi-historical personage, who lived in the century
preceding the Christian era. The story had, therefore, ample time to
reach the ears of the learned African Apuleius, who was born A.D. 130.

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital[5]--a Vampire or
evil spirit which animates dead bodies--is an old and thoroughly Hindu
repertory. It is the rude beginning of that fictitious history which
ripened to the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, and which, fostered by
the genius of Boccaccio, produced the romance of the chivalrous days,
and its last development, the novel--that prose-epic of modern Europe.

Composed in Sanskrit, “the language of the gods,” alias the Latin of
India, it has been translated into all the Prakrit or vernacular and
modern dialects of the great peninsula. The reason why it has not found
favour with the Moslems is doubtless the highly polytheistic spirit
which pervades it; moreover, the Faithful had already a specimen of that
style of composition. This was the Hitopadesa, or Advice of a Friend,
which, as a line in its introduction informs us, was borrowed from an
older book, the Panchatantra, or Five Chapters. It is a collection of
apologues recited by a learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma by name, for the
edification of his pupils, the sons of an Indian Raja. They have been
adapted to or translated into a number of languages, notably into Pehlvi
and Persian, Syriac and Turkish, Greek and Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. And
as the Fables of Pilpay,[6] are generally known, by name at least, to
European litterateurs.. Voltaire remarks,[7] “Quand on fait reflexion
que presque toute la terre a ete infatuee de pareils comes, et qu’ils
ont fait l’education du genre humain, on trouve les fables de Pilpay,
Lokman, d’Esope bien raisonnables.” These tales, detached, but strung
together by artificial means--pearls with a thread drawn through
them--are manifest precursors of the Decamerone, or Ten Days. A modern
Italian critic describes the now classical fiction as a collection of
one hundred of those novels which Boccaccio is believed to have read out
at the court of Queen Joanna of Naples, and which later in life were by
him assorted together by a most simple and ingenious contrivance. But
the great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his “plot,” if
we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century
(1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East, rhymes[8]
and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and knight-errantry. Many of the
“Novelle” are, as Orientalists well know, to this day sung and recited
almost textually by the wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists
of Persia and Central Asia.

The great kshatriya,(soldier) king Vikramaditya,[9] or Vikramarka,
meaning the “Sun of Heroism,” plays in India the part of King Arthur,
and of Harun al-Rashid further West. He is a semi-historical personage.
The son of Gandharba-Sena the donkey and the daughter of the King of
Dhara, he was promised by his father the strength of a thousand male
elephants. When his sire died, his grandfather, the deity Indra,
resolved that the babe should not be born, upon which his mother stabbed
herself. But the tragic event duly happening during the ninth month,
Vikram came into the world by himself, and was carried to Indra, who
pitied and adopted him, and gave him a good education.

The circumstances of his accession to the throne, as will presently
appear, are differently told. Once, however, made King of Malaya, the
modern Malwa, a province of Western Upper India, he so distinguished
himself that the Hindu fabulists, with their usual brave kind of
speaking, have made him “bring the whole earth under the shadow of one
umbrella.”

The last ruler of the race of Mayura, which reigned 318 years, was
Raja-pal. He reigned 25 years, but giving himself up to effeminacy, his
country was invaded by Shakaditya, a king from the highlands of Kumaon.
Vikramaditya, in the fourteenth year of his reign, pretended to espouse
the cause of Raja-pal, attacked and destroyed Shakaditya, and ascended
the throne of Delhi. His capital was Avanti, or Ujjayani, the modern
Ujjain. It was 13 kos (26 miles) long by 18 miles wide, an area of 468
square miles, but a trifle in Indian History. He obtained the title of
Shakari, “foe of the Shakas,” the Sacae or Scythians, by his victories
over that redoubtable race. In the Kali Yug, or Iron Age, he stands
highest amongst the Hindu kings as the patron of learning. Nine persons
under his patronage, popularly known as the “Nine Gems of Science,” hold
in India the honourable position of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.

These learned persons wrote works in the eighteen original dialects
from which, say the Hindus, all the languages of the earth have been
derived.[10] Dhanwantari enlightened the world upon the subjects of
medicine and of incantations. Kshapanaka treated the primary elements.
Amara-Singha compiled a Sanskrit dictionary and a philosophical
treatise. Shankubetalabhatta composed comments, and Ghatakarpara a
poetical work of no great merit. The books of Mihira are not mentioned.
Varaha produced two works on astrology and one on arithmetic. And
Bararuchi introduced certain improvements in grammar, commented upon the
incantations, and wrote a poem in praise of King Madhava.

But the most celebrated of all the patronized ones was Kalidasa. His two
dramas, Sakuntala,[11] and Vikram and Urvasi,[12] have descended to
our day; besides which he produced a poem on the seasons, a work on
astronomy, a poetical history of the gods, and many other books.[13]

Vikramaditya established the Sambat era, dating from A.C. 56. After
a long, happy, and glorious reign, he lost his life in a war with
Shalivahana, King of Pratisthana. That monarch also left behind him an
era called the “Shaka,” beginning with A.D. 78. It is employed, even
now, by the Hindus in recording their births, marriages, and similar
occasions.

King Vikramaditya was succeeded by his infant son Vikrama-Sena, and
father and son reigned over a period of 93 years. At last the latter was
supplanted by a devotee named Samudra-pala, who entered into his body
by miraculous means. The usurper reigned 24 years and 2 months, and the
throne of Delhi continued in the hands of his sixteen successors, who
reigned 641 years and 3 months. Vikrama-pala, the last, was slain in
battle by Tilaka-chandra, King of Vaharannah[14].

It is not pretended that the words of these Hindu tales are preserved
to the letter. The question about the metamorphosis of cats into tigers,
for instance, proceeded from a Gem of Learning in a university much
nearer home than Gaur. Similarly the learned and still living Mgr. Gaume
(Traite du Saint-Esprit, p.. 81) joins Camerarius in the belief that
serpents bite women rather than men. And he quotes (p.. 192) Cornelius a
Lapide, who informs us that the leopard is the produce of a lioness with
a hyena or a bard..

The merit of the old stories lies in their suggestiveness and in their
general applicability. I have ventured to remedy the conciseness of
their language, and to clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood.

                To My Uncle,

       ROBERT BAGSHAW, OF DOVERCOURT,

                These Tales,
    That Will Remind Him Of A Land Which
             He Knows So Well,
       Are Affectionately Inscribed.




INTRODUCTION

The sage Bhavabhuti--Eastern teller of these tales--after making his
initiatory and propitiatory conge to Ganesha, Lord of Incepts, informs
the reader that this book is a string of fine pearls to be hung round
the neck of human intelligence; a fragrant flower to be borne on the
turband of mental wisdom; a jewel of pure gold, which becomes the brow
of all supreme minds; and a handful of powdered rubies, whose tonic
effects will appear palpably upon the mental digestion of every patient.
Finally, that by aid of the lessons inculcated in the following pages,
man will pass happily through this world into the state of absorption,
where fables will be no longer required.

He then teaches us how Vikramaditya the Brave became King of Ujjayani.

Some nineteen centuries ago, the renowned city of Ujjayani witnessed the
birth of a prince to whom was given the gigantic name Vikramaditya.
Even the Sanskrit-speaking people, who are not usually pressed for time,
shortened it to “Vikram”, and a little further West it would infallibly
have been docked down to “Vik”.

Vikram was the second son of an old king Gandharba-Sena, concerning whom
little favourable has reached posterity, except that he became an ass,
married four queens, and had by them six sons, each of whom was more
learned and powerful than the other. It so happened that in course of
time the father died. Thereupon his eldest heir, who was known as Shank,
succeeded to the carpet of Rajaship, and was instantly murdered by
Vikram, his “scorpion”, the hero of the following pages.[15]

By this act of vigour and manly decision, which all younger-brother
princes should devoutly imitate, Vikram having obtained the title of
Bir, or the Brave, made himself Raja. He began to rule well, and the
gods so favoured him that day by day his dominions increased. At
length he became lord of all India, and having firmly established his
government, he instituted an era--an uncommon feat for a mere monarch,
especially when hereditary.

The steps,[16] says the historian, which he took to arrive at that
pinnacle of grandeur, were these:

The old King calling his two grandsons Bhartari-hari and Vikramaditya,
gave them good counsel respecting their future learning. They were told
to master everything, a certain way not to succeed in anything. They
were diligently to learn grammar, the Scriptures, and all the
religious sciences. They were to become familiar with military
tactics, international law, and music, the riding of horses and
elephants--especially the latter--the driving of chariots, and the use
of the broadsword, the bow, and the mogdars or Indian clubs. They were
ordered to be skilful in all kinds of games, in leaping and running, in
besieging forts, in forming and breaking bodies of troops; they were
to endeavour to excel in every princely quality, to be cunning in
ascertaining the power of an enemy, how to make war, to perform
journeys, to sit in the presence of the nobles, to separate the
different sides of a question, to form alliances, to distinguish between
the innocent and the guilty, to assign proper punishments to the wicked,
to exercise authority with perfect justice, and to be liberal. The boys
were then sent to school, and were placed under the care of excellent
teachers, where they became truly famous. Whilst under pupilage, the
eldest was allowed all the power necessary to obtain a knowledge of
royal affairs, and he was not invested with the regal office till in
these preparatory steps he had given full satisfaction to his subjects,
who expressed high approval of his conduct.

The two brothers often conversed on the duties of kings, when the
great Vikramaditya gave the great Bhartari-hari the following valuable
advice[17]:

“As Indra, during the four rainy months, fills the earth with water, so
a king should replenish his treasury with money. As Surya the sun,
in warming the earth eight months, does not scorch it, so a king, in
drawing revenues from his people, ought not to oppress them. As Vayu,
the wind, surrounds and fills everything, so the king by his officers
and spies should become acquainted with the affairs and circumstances
of his whole people. As Yama judges men without partiality or prejudice,
and punishes the guilty, so should a king chastise, without favour,
all offenders. As Varuna, the regent of water, binds with his pasha or
divine noose his enemies, so let a king bind every malefactor safely in
prison. As Chandra,[18] the moon, by his cheering light gives pleasure
to all, thus should a king, by gifts and generosity, make his people
happy. And as Prithwi, the earth, sustains all alike, so should a king
feel an equal affection and forbearance towards every one.”

Become a monarch, Vikram meditated deeply upon what is said of
monarchs:--“A king is fire and air; he is both sun and moon; he is the
god of criminal justice; he is the genius of wealth; he is the regent
of water; he is the lord of the firmament; he is a powerful divinity who
appears in human shape.” He reflected with some satisfaction that the
scriptures had made him absolute, had left the lives and properties
of all his subjects to his arbitrary will, had pronounced him to be
an incarnate deity, and had threatened to punish with death even ideas
derogatory to his honour.

He punctually observed all the ordinances laid down by the author of the
Niti, or institutes of government. His night and day were divided into
sixteen pahars or portions, each one hour and a half, and they were
disposed of as follows:--

Before dawn Vikram was awakened by a servant appointed to this
special duty. He swallowed--a thing allowed only to a khshatriya or
warrior--Mithridatic every morning on the saliva[19], and he made the
cooks taste every dish before he ate of it. As soon as he had risen,
the pages in waiting repeated his splendid qualities, and as he left his
sleeping-room in full dress, several Brahmans rehearsed the praises
of the gods. Presently he bathed, worshipped his guardian deity, again
heard hymns, drank a little water, and saw alms distributed to the poor.
He ended this watch by auditing his accounts.

Next entering his court, he placed himself amidst the assembly. He was
always armed when he received strangers, and he caused even women to be
searched for concealed weapons. He was surrounded by so many spies and
so artful, that of a thousand, no two ever told the same tale. At
the levee, on his right sat his relations, the Brahmans, and men of
distinguished birth. The other castes were on the left, and close to
him stood the ministers and those whom he delighted to consult. Afar
in front gathered the bards chanting the praises of the gods and of
the king; also the charioteers, elephanteers, horsemen, and soldiers of
valour. Amongst the learned men in those assemblies there were ever
some who were well instructed in all the scriptures, and others who had
studied in one particular school of philosophy, and were acquainted only
with the works on divine wisdom, or with those on justice, civil and
criminal, on the arts, mineralogy or the practice of physic;
also persons cunning in all kinds of customs; riding-masters,
dancing-masters, teachers of good behaviour, examiners, tasters, mimics,
mountebanks, and others, who all attended the court and awaited the
king’s commands. He here pronounced judgment in suits of appeal. His
poets wrote about him:

               The lord of lone splendour an instant suspends
               His course at mid-noon, ere he westward descends;
               And brief are the moments our young monarch knows,
               Devoted to pleasure or paid to repose!

Before the second sandhya,[20] or noon, about the beginning of the third
watch, he recited the names of the gods, bathed, and broke his fast in
his private room; then rising from food, he was amused by singers and
dancing girls. The labours of the day now became lighter. After eating
he retired, repeating the name of his guardian deity, visited the
temples, saluted the gods conversed with the priests, and proceeded
to receive and to distribute presents. Fifthly, he discussed political
questions with his ministers and councillors.

On the announcement of the herald that it was the sixth watch--about
2 or 3 P.M.--Vikram allowed himself to follow his own inclinations, to
regulate his family, and to transact business of a private and personal
nature.

After gaining strength by rest, he proceeded to review his troops,
examining the men, saluting the officers, and holding military councils.
At sunset he bathed a third time and performed the five sacraments of
listening to a prelection of the Veda; making oblations to the manes;
sacrificing to Fire in honour of the deities; giving rice to dumb
creatures; and receiving guests with due ceremonies. He spent the
evening amidst a select company of wise, learned, and pious men,
conversing on different subjects, and reviewing the business of the day.

The night was distributed with equal care. During the first portion
Vikram received the reports which his spies and envoys, dressed in every
disguise, brought to him about his enemies. Against the latter he
ceased not to use the five arts, namely--dividing the kingdom, bribes,
mischief-making, negotiations, and brute-force--especially preferring
the first two and the last. His forethought and prudence taught him
to regard all his nearest neighbours and their allies as hostile. The
powers beyond those natural enemies he considered friendly because they
were the foes of his foes. And all the remoter nations he looked upon as
neutrals, in a transitional or provisional state as it were, till they
became either his neighbours’ neighbours, or his own neighbours, that is
to say, his friends or his foes.

This important duty finished he supped, and at the end of the third
watch he retired to sleep, which was not allowed to last beyond three
hours. In the sixth watch he arose and purified himself. The seventh
was devoted to holding private consultations with his ministers, and to
furnishing the officers of government with requisite instructions. The
eighth or last watch was spent with the Purohita or priest, and with
Brahmans, hailing the dawn with its appropriate rites; he then bathed,
made the customary offerings, and prayed in some unfrequented place near
pure water.

And throughout these occupations he bore in mind the duty of kings,
namely--to pursue every object till it be accomplished; to succour all
dependents, and hospitably to receive guests, however numerous. He was
generous to his subjects respecting taxes, and kind of speech; yet he
was inexorable as death in the punishment of offenses. He rarely hunted,
and he visited his pleasure gardens only on stated days. He acted in his
own dominions with justice; he chastised foreign foes with rigour; he
behaved generously to Brahmans, and he avoided favouritism amongst his
friends. In war he never slew a suppliant, a spectator, a person asleep
or undressed, or anyone that showed fear. Whatever country he conquered,
offerings were presented to its gods, and effects and money were given
to the reverends. But what benefited him most was his attention to the
creature comforts of the nine Gems of Science: those eminent men ate
and drank themselves into fits of enthusiasm, and ended by immortalizing
their patron’s name.

Become Vikram the Great he established his court at a delightful and
beautiful location rich in the best of water. The country was difficult
of access, and artificially made incapable of supporting a host of
invaders, but four great roads met near the city. The capital was
surrounded with durable ramparts, having gates of defence, and near it
was a mountain fortress, under the especial charge of a great captain.

The metropolis was well garrisoned and provisioned, and it surrounded
the royal palace, a noble building without as well as within. Grandeur
seemed embodied there, and Prosperity had made it her own. The nearer
ground, viewed from the terraces and pleasure pavilions, was a lovely
mingling of rock and mountain, plain and valley, field and fallow,
crystal lake and glittering stream. The banks of the winding Lavana
were fringed with meads whose herbage, pearly with morning dew, afforded
choicest grazing for the sacred cow, and were dotted with perfumed
clumps of Bo-trees, tamarinds, and holy figs: in one place Vikram
planted 100,000 in a single orchard and gave them to his spiritual
advisers. The river valley separated the stream from a belt of forest
growth which extended to a hill range, dark with impervious jungle, and
cleared here and there for the cultivator’s village. Behind it, rose
another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue with air,
whilst in the background towered range upon range, here rising abruptly
into points and peaks, there ramp-shaped or wall-formed, with sheer
descents, and all of light azure hue adorned with glories of silver and
gold.

After reigning for some years, Vikram the Brave found himself at the
age of thirty, a staid and sober middle-aged man, He had several
sons--daughters are naught in India--by his several wives, and he had
some paternal affection for nearly all--except of course, for his eldest
son, a youth who seemed to conduct himself as though he had a claim to
the succession. In fact, the king seemed to have taken up his abode
for life at Ujjayani, when suddenly he bethought himself, “I must visit
those countries of whose names I am ever hearing.” The fact is, he had
determined to spy out in disguise the lands of all his foes, and to find
the best means of bringing against them his formidable army.

      *     *     *     *     *     *

We now learn how Bhartari Raja becomes Regent of Ujjayani.

Having thus resolved, Vikram the Brave gave the government into the
charge of a younger brother, Bhartari Raja, and in the garb of a
religious mendicant, accompanied by Dharma Dhwaj, his second son, a
youth bordering on the age of puberty, he began to travel from city to
city, and from forest to forest.

The Regent was of a settled melancholic turn of mind, having lost
in early youth a very peculiar wife. One day, whilst out hunting, he
happened to pass a funeral pyre, upon which a Brahman’s widow had just
become Sati (a holy woman) with the greatest fortitude. On his return
home he related the adventure to Sita Rani, his spouse, and she at once
made reply that virtuous women die with their husbands, killed by the
fire of grief, not by the flames of the pile. To prove her truth the
prince, after an affectionate farewell, rode forth to the chase, and
presently sent back the suite with his robes torn and stained, to report
his accidental death. Sita perished upon the spot, and the widower
remained inconsolable--for a time.

He led the dullest of lives, and took to himself sundry spouses, all
equally distinguished for birth, beauty, and modesty. Like his brother,
he performed all the proper devoirs of a Raja, rising before the day to
finish his ablutions, to worship the gods, and to do due obeisance to
the Brahmans. He then ascended the throne, to judge his people according
to the Shastra, carefully keeping in subjection lust, anger, avarice,
folly, drunkenness, and pride; preserving himself from being seduced by
the love of gaming and of the chase; restraining his desire for dancing,
singing, and playing on musical instruments, and refraining from sleep
during daytime, from wine, from molesting men of worth, from dice, from
putting human beings to death by artful means, from useless travelling,
and from holding any one guilty without the commission of a crime. His
levees were in a hall decently splendid, and he was distinguished only
by an umbrella of peacock’s feathers; he received all complainants,
petitioners, and presenters of offenses with kind looks and soft words.
He united to himself the seven or eight wise councillors, and the
sober and virtuous secretary that formed the high cabinet of his royal
brother, and they met in some secret lonely spot, as a mountain, a
terrace, a bower or a forest, whence women, parrots, and other talkative
birds were carefully excluded.

And at the end of this useful and somewhat laborious day, he retired to
his private apartments, and, after listening to spiritual songs and
to soft music, he fell asleep. Sometimes he would summon his brother’s
“Nine Gems of Science,” and give ear to their learned discourses. But it
was observed that the viceroy reserved this exercise for nights when
he was troubled with insomnia--the words of wisdom being to him an
infallible remedy for that disorder.

Thus passed onwards his youth, doing nothing that it could desire,
forbidden all pleasures because they were unprincely, and working in the
palace harder than in the pauper’s hut. Having, however, fortunately for
himself, few predilections and no imagination, he began to pride himself
upon being a philosopher. Much business from an early age had dulled
his wits, which were never of the most brilliant; and in the steadily
increasing torpidity of his spirit, he traced the germs of that quietude
which forms the highest happiness of man in this storm of matter called
the world. He therefore allowed himself but one friend of his soul. He
retained, I have said, his brother’s seven or eight ministers; he was
constant in attendance upon the Brahman priests who officiated at the
palace, and who kept the impious from touching sacred property; and he
was courteous to the commander-in-chief who directed his warriors, to
the officers of justice who inflicted punishment upon offenders, and
to the lords of towns, varying in number from one to a thousand. But
he placed an intimate of his own in the high position of confidential
councillor, the ambassador to regulate war and peace.

Mahi-pala was a person of noble birth, endowed with shining abilities,
popular, dexterous in business, acquainted with foreign parts, famed for
eloquence and intrepidity, and as Menu the Lawgiver advises, remarkably
handsome.

Bhartari Raja, as I have said, became a quietist and a philosopher.
But Kama,[21] the bright god who exerts his sway over the three worlds,
heaven and earth and grewsome Hades,[22] had marked out the prince once
more as the victim of his blossom-tipped shafts and his flowery bow.
How, indeed, could he hope to escape the doom which has fallen equally
upon Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and dreadful Shiva the
Three-eyed Destroyer[23]?

By reason of her exceeding beauty, her face was a full moon shining in
the clearest sky; her hair was the purple cloud of autumn when, gravid
with rain, it hangs low over earth; and her complexion mocked the pale
waxen hue of the large-flowered jasmine. Her eyes were those of the
timid antelope; her lips were as red as those of the pomegranate’s bud,
and when they opened, from them distilled a fountain of ambrosia. Her
neck was like a pigeon’s; her hand the pink lining of the conch-shell;
her waist a leopard’s; her feet the softest lotuses. In a word, a model
of grace and loveliness was Dangalah Rani, Raja Bhartari’s last and
youngest wife.

The warrior laid down his arms before her; the politician spoke
out every secret in her presence. The religious prince would have
slaughtered a cow--that sole unforgivable sin--to save one of her
eyelashes: the absolute king would not drink a cup of water without her
permission; the staid philosopher, the sober quietist, to win from her
the shadow of a smile, would have danced before her like a singing-girl.
So desperately enamoured became Bhartari Raja.

It is written, however, that love, alas! breeds not love; and so
it happened to the Regent. The warmth of his affection, instead of
animating his wife, annoyed her; his protestations wearied her; his vows
gave her the headache; and his caresses were a colic that made her blood
run cold. Of course, the prince perceived nothing, being lost in wonder
and admiration of the beauty’s coyness and coquetry. And as women must
give away their hearts, whether asked or not, so the lovely Dangalah
Rani lost no time in lavishing all the passion of her idle soul upon
Mahi-pala, the handsome ambassador of peace and war. By this means the
three were happy and were contented; their felicity, however, being
built on a rotten foundation, could not long endure. It soon ended in
the following extraordinary way.

In the city of Ujjayani,[24] within sight of the palace, dwelt a Brahman
and his wife, who, being old and poor, and having nothing else to do,
had applied themselves to the practice of austere devotion.[25] They
fasted and refrained from drink, they stood on their heads and held
their arms for weeks in the air; they prayed till their knees were like
pads; they disciplined themselves with scourges of wire; and they walked
about unclad in the cold season, and in summer they sat within a circle
of flaming wood, till they became the envy and admiration of all the
plebeian gods that inhabit the lower heavens. In fine, as a reward for
their exceeding piety, the venerable pair received at the hands of a
celestial messenger an apple of the tree Kalpavriksha--a fruit which has
the virtue of conferring eternal life upon him that tastes it.

Scarcely had the god disappeared, when the Brahman, opening his
toothless mouth, prepared to eat the fruit of immortality. Then his wife
addressed him in these words, shedding copious tears the while:

“To die, O man, is a passing pain; to be poor is an interminable
anguish. Surely our present lot is the penalty of some great crime
committed by us in a past state of being.[26] Callest thou this state
life? Better we die at once, and so escape the woes of the world!”

Hearing these words, the Brahman sat undecided, with open jaws and eyes
fixed upon the apple. Presently he found tongue: “I have accepted
the fruit, and have brought it here; but having heard thy speech, my
intellect hath wasted away; now I will do whatever thou pointest out.”

The wife resumed her discourse, which had been interrupted by a more
than usually copious flow of tears. “Moreover, O husband, we are old,
and what are the enjoyments of the stricken in years? Truly quoth the
poet--

               Die loved in youth, not hated in age.

If that fruit could have restored thy dimmed eyes, and deaf ears, and
blunted taste, and warmth of love, I had not spoken to thee thus.”

After which the Brahman threw away the apple, to the great joy of his
wife, who felt a natural indignation at the prospect of seeing her
goodman become immortal, whilst she still remained subject to the laws
of death; but she concealed this motive in the depths of her thought,
enlarging, as women are apt to do, upon everything but the truth. And
she spoke with such success, that the priest was about to toss in his
rage the heavenly fruit into the fire, reproaching the gods as if by
sending it they had done him an injury. Then the wife snatched it out
of his hand, and telling him it was too precious to be wasted, bade him
arise and gird his loins and wend him to the Regent’s palace, and
offer him the fruit--as King Vikram was absent--with a right reverend
brahmanical benediction. She concluded with impressing upon her
unworldly husband the necessity of requiring a large sum of money as a
return for his inestimable gift. “By this means,” she said, “thou mayst
promote thy present and future welfare.[27]”

Then the Brahman went forth, and standing in the presence of the Raja,
told him all things touching the fruit, concluding with “O, mighty
prince! vouchsafe to accept this tribute, and bestow wealth upon me. I
shall be happy in your living long!”

Bhartari Raja led the supplicant into an inner strongroom, where stood
heaps of the finest gold-dust, and bade him carry away all that he
could; this the priest did, not forgetting to fill even his eloquent and
toothless mouth with the precious metal. Having dismissed the devotee
groaning under the burden, the Regent entered the apartments of his
wives, and having summoned the beautiful Queen Dangalah Rani, gave her
the fruit, and said, “Eat this, light of my eyes! This fruit--joy of my
heart!--will make thee everlastingly young and beautiful.”

The pretty queen, placing both hands upon her husband’s bosom, kissed
his eyes and lips, and sweetly smiling on his face--for great is the
guile of women--whispered, “Eat it thyself, dear one, or at least share
it with me; for what is life and what is youth without the presence of
those we love?” But the Raja, whose heart was melted by these unusual
words, put her away tenderly, and, having explained that the fruit would
serve for only one person, departed.

Whereupon the pretty queen, sweetly smiling as before, slipped the
precious present into her pocket. When the Regent was transacting
business in the hall of audience she sent for the ambassador who
regulated war and peace, and presented him with the apple in a manner at
least as tender as that with which it had been offered to her.

Then the ambassador, after slipping the fruit into his pocket also,
retired from the presence of the pretty queen, and meeting Lakha, one of
the maids of honour, explained to her its wonderful power, and gave
it to her as a token of his love. But the maid of honour, being an
ambitious girl, determined that the fruit was a fit present to set
before the Regent in the absence of the King. Bhartari Raja accepted it,
bestowed on her great wealth, and dismissed her with many thanks.

He then took up the apple and looked at it with eyes brimful of tears,
for he knew the whole extent of his misfortune. His heart ached, he felt
a loathing for the world, and he said with sighs and groans[28]:

“Of what value are these delusions of wealth and affection, whose
sweetness endures for a moment and becomes eternal bitterness? Love is
like the drunkard’s cup: delicious is the first drink, palling are the
draughts that succeed it, and most distasteful are the dregs. What is
life but a restless vision of imaginary pleasures and of real pains,
from which the only waking is the terrible day of death? The affection
of this world is of no use, since, in consequence of it, we fall at last
into hell. For which reason it is best to practice the austerities of
religion, that the Deity may bestow upon us hereafter that happiness
which he refuses to us here!”

Thus did Bhartari Raja determine to abandon the world. But before
setting out for the forest, he could not refrain from seeing the queen
once more, so hot was the flame which Kama had kindled in his heart.
He therefore went to the apartments of his women, and having caused
Dangalah Rani to be summoned, he asked her what had become of the fruit
which he had given to her. She answered that, according to his command,
she had eaten it. Upon which the Regent showed her the apple, and she
beholding it stood aghast, unable to make any reply. The Raja gave
careful orders for her beheading; he then went out, and having had the
fruit washed, ate it. He quitted the throne to be a jogi, or religious
mendicant, and without communicating with any one departed into the
jungle. There he became such a devotee that death had no power over him,
and he is wandering still. But some say that he was duly absorbed into
the essence of the Deity.

      *     *     *     *     *     *

We are next told how the valiant Vikram returned to his own country.

Thus Vikram’s throne remained empty. When the news reached King Indra,
Regent of the Lower Firmament and Protector of Earthly Monarchs, he sent
Prithwi Pala, a fierce giant,[29] to defend the city of Ujjayani till
such time as its lawful master might reappear, and the guardian used to
keep watch and ward night and day over his trust.

In less than a year the valorous Raja Vikram became thoroughly tired of
wandering about the woods half dressed: now suffering from famine, then
exposed to the attacks of wild beasts, and at all times very ill at
ease. He reflected also that he was not doing his duty to his wives and
children; that the heir-apparent would probably make the worst use of
the parental absence; and finally, that his subjects, deprived of his
fatherly care, had been left in the hands of a man who, for ought he
could say, was not worthy of the high trust. He had also spied out
all the weak points of friend and foe. Whilst these and other equally
weighty considerations were hanging about the Raja’s mind, he heard a
rumour of the state of things spread abroad; that Bhartari, the regent,
having abdicated his throne, had gone away into the forest. Then quoth
Vikram to his son, “We have ended our wayfarings, now let us turn our
steps homewards!”

The gong was striking the mysterious hour of midnight as the king and
the young prince approached the principal gate. And they were pushing
through it when a monstrous figure rose up before them and called out
with a fearful voice, “Who are ye, and where are ye going? Stand and
deliver your names!”

“I am Raja Vikram,” rejoined the king, half choked with rage, “and I am
come to mine own city. Who art thou that darest to stop or stay me?”

“That question is easily answered,” cried Prithwi Pala the giant, in his
roaring voice; “the gods have sent me to protect Ujjayani. If thou be
really Raja Vikram, prove thyself a man: first fight with me, and then
return to thine own.”

The warrior king cried “Sadhu!” wanting nothing better. He girt his
girdle tight round his loins, summoned his opponent into the empty space
beyond the gate, told him to stand on guard, and presently began to
devise some means of closing with or running in upon him. The giant’s
fists were large as watermelons, and his knotted arms whistled through
the air like falling trees, threatening fatal blows. Besides which the
Raja’s head scarcely reached the giant’s stomach, and the latter, each
time he struck out, whooped so abominably loud, that no human nerves
could remain unshaken.

At last Vikram’s good luck prevailed. The giant’s left foot slipped, and
the hero, seizing his antagonist’s other leg, began to trip him up. At
the same moment the young prince, hastening to his parent’s assistance,
jumped viciously upon the enemy’s naked toes. By their united exertions
they brought him to the ground, when the son sat down upon his stomach,
making himself as weighty as he well could, whilst the father, climbing
up to the monster’s throat, placed himself astride upon it, and pressing
both thumbs upon his eyes, threatened to blind him if he would not
yield.

Then the giant, modifying the bellow of his voice, cried out--

“O Raja, thou hast overthrown me, and I grant thee thy life.”

“Surely thou art mad, monster,” replied the king, in jeering tone, half
laughing, half angry. “To whom grantest thou life? If I desire it I can
kill thee; how, then, cost thou talk about granting me my life?”

“Vikram of Ujjayani,” said the giant, “be not too proud! I will save
thee from a nearly impending death. Only hearken to the tale which I
have to tell thee, and use thy judgment, and act upon it. So shalt
thou rule the world free from care, and live without danger, and die
happily.”

“Proceed,” quoth the Raja, after a moment’s thought, dismounting from
the giant’s throat, and beginning to listen with all his ears.

The giant raised himself from the ground, and when in a sitting posture,
began in solemn tones to speak as follows:

“In short, the history of the matter is, that three men were born in
this same city of Ujjayani, in the same lunar mansion, in the same
division of the great circle described upon the ecliptic, and in the
same period of time. You, the first, were born in the house of a king.
The second was an oilman’s son, who was slain by the third, a jogi,
or anchorite, who kills all he can, wafting the sweet scent of human
sacrifice to the nostrils of Durga, goddess of destruction. Moreover,
the holy man, after compassing the death of the oilman’s son, has
suspended him head downwards from a mimosa tree in a cemetery. He is now
anxiously plotting thy destruction. He hath murdered his own child--”

“And how came an anchorite to have a child?” asked Raja Vikram,
incredulously.

“That is what I am about to tell thee,” replied the giant. “In the good
days of thy generous father, Gandharba-Sena, as the court was taking its
pleasure in the forest, they saw a devotee, or rather a devotee’s head,
protruding from a hole in the ground. The white ants had surrounded his
body with a case of earth, and had made their home upon his skin. All
kinds of insects and small animals crawled up and down the face, yet not
a muscle moved. Wasps had hung their nests to its temples, and scorpions
wandered in and out of the matted and clotted hair; yet the hermit felt
them not. He spoke to no one; he received no gifts; and had it not been
for the opening of his nostrils, as he continually inhaled the pungent
smoke of a thorn fire, man would have deemed him dead. Such were his
religious austerities.

“Thy father marvelled much at the sight, and rode home in profound
thought. That evening, as he sat in the hall of audience, he could speak
of nothing but the devotee; and his curiosity soon rose to such a pitch,
that he proclaimed about the city a reward of one hundred gold pieces to
any one that could bring to court this anchorite of his own free will.

“Shortly afterwards, Vasantasena, a singing and dancing girl more
celebrated for wit and beauty than for sagesse or discretion, appeared
before thy sire, and offered for the petty inducement of a gold bangle
to bring the anchorite into the palace, carrying a baby on his shoulder.

“The king hearing her speak was astonished, gave her a betel leaf in
token that he held her to her promise, and permitted her to depart,
which she did with a laugh of triumph.

“Vasantasena went directly to the jungle, where she found the pious man
faint with thirst, shriveled with hunger, and half dead with heat
and cold. She cautiously put out the fire. Then, having prepared a
confection, she approached from behind and rubbed upon his lips a little
of the sweetmeat, which he licked up with great relish. Thereupon she
made more and gave it to him. After two days of this generous diet he
gained some strength, and on the third, as he felt a finger upon his
mouth, he opened his eyes and said, ‘Why hast thou come here?’

“The girl, who had her story in readiness, replied: “I am the daughter
of a deity, and have practiced religious observances in the heavenly
regions. I have now come into this forest!” And the devotee, who began
to think how much more pleasant is such society than solitude, asked her
where her hut was, and requested to be led there.

“Then Vasantasena, having unearthed the holy man and compelled him to
purify himself, led him to the abode which she had caused to be built
for herself in the wood. She explained its luxuries by the nature of
her vow, which bound her to indulge in costly apparel, in food with six
flavours, and in every kind of indulgence.[30] In course of time the
hermit learned to follow her example; he gave up inhaling smoke, and he
began to eat and drink as a daily occupation.

“At length Kama began to trouble him. Briefly the saint and saintess
were made man and wife, by the simple form of matrimony called the
Gandharba-vivaha,[31] and about ten months afterwards a son was born to
them. Thus the anchorite came to have a child.

“Remained Vasantasena’s last feat. Some months passed: then she said
to the devotee her husband, ‘Oh saint! let us now, having finished our
devotions, perform a pilgrimage to some sacred place, that all the sins
of our bodies may be washed away, after which we will die and depart
into everlasting happiness.’ Cajoled by these speeches, the hermit
mounted his child upon his shoulder and followed her where she
went--directly into Raja Gandharba-Sena’s palace.

“When the king and the ministers and the officers and the courtiers saw
Vasantasena, and her spouse carrying the baby, they recognized her from
afar. The Raja exclaimed, ‘Lo! this is the very singing girl who went
forth to bring back the devotee. ‘And all replied: ‘O great monarch!
thou speakest truly; this is the very same woman. And be pleased to
observe that whatever things she, having asked leave to undertake, went
forth to do, all these she hath done!’ Then gathering around her they
asked her all manner of questions, as if the whole matter had been the
lightest and the most laughable thing in the world.

“But the anchorite, having heard the speeches of the king and his
courtiers, thought to himself, ‘They have done this for the purpose of
taking away the fruits of my penance.’ Cursing them all with terrible
curses, and taking up his child, he left the hall. Thence he went to the
forest, slaughtered the innocent, and began to practice austerities with
a view to revenge that hour, and having slain his child, he will attempt
thy life. His prayers have been heard. In the first place they deprived
thee of thy father. Secondly, they cast enmity between thee and thy
brother, thus dooming him to an untimely end. Thirdly, they are now
working thy ruin. The anchorite’s design is to offer up a king and a
king’s son to his patroness Durga, and by virtue of such devotional act
he will obtain the sovereignty of the whole world!

“But I have promised, O Vikram, to save thee, if such be the will of
Fortune, from impending destruction. Therefore hearken well unto my
words. Distrust them that dwell amongst the dead, and remember that
it is lawful and right to strike off his head that would slay thee. So
shalt thou rule the universal earth, and leave behind thee an immortal
name!”

Suddenly Prithwi Pala, the giant, ceased speaking, and disappeared.
Vikram and his son then passed through the city gates, feeling their
limbs to be certain that no bones were broken, and thinking over the
scene that had occurred.

      *     *     *     *     *     *

We now are informed how the valiant King Vikram met with the Vampire.

It was the spring season when the Raja returned, and the Holi
festival[32] caused dancing and singing in every house. Ujjayani was
extraordinarily happy and joyful at the return of her ruler, who joined
in her gladness with all his kingly heart. The faces and dresses of
the public were red and yellow with gulal and abir,--perfumed
powders,[33]--which were sprinkled upon one another in token of
merriment. Musicians deafened the citizens’ ears, dancing girls
performed till ready to faint with fatigue, the manufacturers of
comfits made their fortunes, and the Nine Gems of Science celebrated the
auspicious day with the most long-winded odes. The royal hero, decked
in regal attire, and attended by many thousands of state palanquins
glittering with their various ornaments, and escorted by a suite of a
hundred kingly personages, with their martial array of the four hosts,
of cavalry, elephants, chariots, and infantry, and accompanied by Amazon
girls, lovely as the suite of the gods, himself a personification of
majesty, bearing the white parasol of dominion, with a golden staff and
tassels, began once more to reign.

After the first pleasures of return, the king applied himself
unremittingly to good government and to eradicating the abuses which had
crept into the administration during the period of his wanderings.

Mindful of the wise saying, “if the Rajadid not punish the guilty, the
stronger would roast the weaker like a fish on the spit,” he began
the work of reform with an iron hand. He confiscated the property of
a councillor who had the reputation of taking bribes; he branded the
forehead of a sudra or servile man whose breath smelt of ardent spirits,
and a goldsmith having been detected in fraud he ordered him to be cut
in shreds with razors as the law in its mercy directs. In the case of a
notorious evil-speaker he opened the back of his head and had his tongue
drawn through the wound. A few murderers he burned alive on iron beds,
praying the while that Vishnu might have mercy upon their souls. His
spies were ordered, as the shastra called “The Prince” advises, to mix
with robbers and thieves with a view of leading them into situations
where they might most easily be entrapped, and once or twice when the
fellows were too wary, he seized them and their relations and impaled
them all, thereby conclusively proving, without any mistake, that he was
king of earth.

With the sex feminine he was equally severe. A woman convicted of having
poisoned an elderly husband in order to marry a younger man was thrown
to the dogs, which speedily devoured her. He punished simple infidelity
by cutting off the offender’s nose--an admirable practice, which is not
only a severe penalty to the culprit, but also a standing warning to
others, and an efficient preventative to any recurrence of the fault.
Faithlessness combined with bad example or brazen-facedness was further
treated by being led in solemn procession through the bazar mounted on
a diminutive and crop-eared donkey, with the face turned towards the
crupper. After a few such examples the women of Ujjayani became almost
modest; it is the fault of man when they are not tolerably well behaved
in one point at least.

Every day as Vikram sat upon the judgment-seat, trying causes and
punishing offenses, he narrowly observed the speech, the gestures,
and the countenances of the various criminals and litigants and their
witnesses. Ever suspecting women, as I have said, and holding them to
be the root of all evil, he never failed when some sin or crime more
horrible than usual came before him, to ask the accused, “Who is she?”
 and the suddenness of the question often elicited the truth by accident.
For there can be nothing thoroughly and entirely bad unless a woman is
at the bottom of it; and, knowing this, Raja Vikram made certain notable
hits under the most improbable circumstances, which had almost given him
a reputation for omniscience. But this is easily explained: a man intent
upon squaring the circle will see squares in circles wherever he looks,
and sometimes he will find them.

In disputed cases of money claims, the king adhered strictly to
established practice, and consulted persons learned in the law. He
seldom decided a cause on his own judgment, and he showed great temper
and patience in bearing with rough language from irritated plaintiffs
and defendants, from the infirm, and from old men beyond eighty.
That humble petitioners might not be baulked in having access to the
“fountain of justice,” he caused an iron box to be suspended by a chain
from the windows of his sleeping apartment. Every morning he ordered
the box to be opened before him, and listened to all the placets at full
length. Even in this simple process he displayed abundant cautiousness.
For, having forgotten what little of the humanities he had mastered in
his youth, he would hand the paper to a secretary whose business it was
to read it out before him; after which operation the man of letters was
sent into an inner room, and the petition was placed in the hands of
a second scribe. Once it so happened by the bungling of the deceitful
kayasths(clerks) that an important difference was found to occur in the
same sheet. So upon strict inquiry one secretary lost his ears and
the other his right hand. After this petitions were rarely if ever
falsified.

The Raja Vikram also lost no time in attacking the cities and towns and
villages of his enemies, but the people rose to a man against him, and
hewing his army to pieces with their weapons, vanquished him. This took
place so often that he despaired of bringing all the earth under the
shadow of his umbrella.

At length on one occasion when near a village he listened to a
conversation of the inhabitants. A woman having baked some cakes was
giving them to her child, who leaving the edges would eat only the
middle. On his asking for another cake, she cried, “This boy’s way is
like Vikram’s in his attempt to conquer the world!” On his inquiring
“Mother, why, what am I doing; and what has Vikram done?”

“Thou, my boy,” she replied, “throwing away the outside of the cake
eatest the middle only. Vikram also in his ambition, without subduing
the frontiers before attacking the towns, invades the heart of the
country and lays it waste. On that account, both the townspeople and
others rising, close upon him from the frontiers to the centre, and
destroy his army. That is his folly.”

Vikram took notice of the woman’s words. He strengthened his army and
resumed his attack on the provinces and cities, beginning with the
frontiers, reducing the outer towns and stationing troops in the
intervals. Thus he proceeded regularly with his invasions. After a
respite, adopting the same system and marshalling huge armies, he
reduced in regular course each kingdom and province till he became
monarch of the whole world.

It so happened that one day as Vikram the Brave sat upon the
judgment-seat, a young merchant, by name Mal Deo, who had lately arrived
at Ujjayani with loaded camels and elephants, and with the reputation
of immense wealth, entered the palace court. Having been received with
extreme condescension, he gave into the king’s hand a fruit which he had
brought in his own, and then spreading a prayer carpet on the floor he
sat down. Presently, after a quarter of an hour, he arose and went away.
When he had gone the king reflected in his mind: “Under this disguise,
perhaps, is the very man of whom the giant spoke.” Suspecting this, he
did not eat the fruit, but calling the master of the household he gave
the present to him, ordering him to keep it in a very careful manner.
The young merchant, however, continued every day to court the honour of
an interview, each time presenting a similar gift.

By chance one morning Raja Vikram went, attended by his ministers, to
see his stables. At this time the young merchant also arrived there, and
in the usual manner placed a fruit in the royal hand. As the king
was thoughtfully tossing it in the air, it accidentally fell from his
fingers to the ground. Then the monkey, who was tethered amongst the
horses to draw calamities from their heads,[34] snatched it up and tore
it to pieces. Whereupon a ruby of such size and water came forth that
the king and his ministers, beholding its brilliancy, gave vent to
expressions of wonder.

Quoth Vikram to the young merchant severely--for his suspicions were now
thoroughly roused--“Why hast thou given to us all this wealth?”

“O great king,” replied Mal Deo, demurely, “it is written in the
scriptures (shastra) ‘Of Ceremony’ that ‘we must not go empty-handed
into the presence of the following persons, namely, Rajas, spiritual
teachers, judges, young maidens, and old women whose daughters we would
marry.’ But why, O Vikram, cost thou speak of one ruby only, since in
each of the fruits which I have laid at thy feet there is a similar
jewel?” Having heard this speech, the king said to the master of his
household, “Bring all the fruits which I have entrusted to thee.” The
treasurer, on receiving the royal command, immediately brought them,
and having split them, there was found in each one a ruby, one and all
equally perfect in size and water. Raja Vikram beholding such treasures
was excessively pleased. Having sent for a lapidary, he ordered him to
examine the rubies, saying, “We cannot take anything with us out of this
world. Virtue is a noble quality to possess here below--so tell justly
what is the value of each of these gems.[35]”

To so moral a speech the lapidary replied, “Maha-Raja[36]! thou hast
said truly; whoever possesses virtue, possesses everything; virtue
indeed accompanies us always, and is of advantage in both worlds. Hear,
O great king! each gem is perfect in colour, quality and beauty. If I
were to say that the value of each was ten million millions of suvarnas
(gold pieces), even then thou couldst not understand its real worth. In
fact, each ruby would buy one of the seven regions into which the earth
is divided.”

The king on hearing this was delighted, although his suspicions were
not satisfied; and, having bestowed a robe of honour upon the lapidary,
dismissed him. Thereon, taking the young merchant’s hand, he led him
into the palace, seated him upon his own carpet in presence of the
court, and began to say, “My entire kingdom is not worth one of these
rubies: tell me how it is that thou who buyest and sellest hast given me
such and so many pearls?”

Mal Deo replied: “O great king, the speaking of matters like the
following in public is not right; these things--prayers, spells, drugs,
good qualities, household affairs, the eating of forbidden food, and the
evil we may have heard of our neighbour--should not be discussed in full
assembly. Privately I will disclose to thee my wishes. This is the
way of the world; when an affair comes to six ears, it does not remain
secret; if a matter is confided to four ears it may escape further
hearing; and if to two ears even Brahma the Creator does not know it;
how then can any rumour of it come to man?”

Having heard this speech, Raja Vikram took Mal Deo aside, and began to
ask him, saying, “O generous man! you have given me so many rubies, and
even for a single day you have not eaten food with me; I am exceedingly
ashamed, tell me what you desire.”

“Raja,” said the young merchant, “I am not Mal Deo, but Shanta-Shil,[37]
a devotee. I am about to perform spells, incantations and magical rites
on the banks of the river Godavari, in a large smashana, a cemetery
where bodies are burned. By this means the Eight Powers of Nature will
all become mine. This thing I ask of you as alms, that you and the young
prince Dharma Dhwaj will pass one night with me, doing my bidding. By
you remaining near me my incantations will be successful.”

The valiant Vikram nearly started from his seat at the word cemetery,
but, like a ruler of men, he restrained his face from expressing his
feelings, and he presently replied, “Good, we will come, tell us on what
day!”

“You are to come to me,” said the devotee, “armed, but without
followers, on the Monday evening the 14th of the dark half of the month
Bhadra.[38]” The Raja said: “Do you go your ways, we will certainly
come.” In this manner, having received a promise from the king, and
having taken leave, the devotee returned to his house: thence he
repaired to the temple, and having made preparations, and taken all the
necessary things, he went back into the cemetery and sat down to his
ceremonies.

The valiant Vikram, on the other hand, retired into an inner apartment,
to consult his own judgment about an adventure with which, for fear of
ridicule, he was unwilling to acquaint even the most trustworthy of his
ministers.

In due time came the evening moon’s day, the 14th of the dark half of
the month Bhadra. As the short twilight fell gloomily on earth, the
warrior king accompanied by his son, with turband-ends tied under their
chins, and with trusty blades tucked under their arms ready for foes,
human, bestial, or devilish, slipped out unseen through the palace
wicket, and took the road leading to the cemetery on the river bank.

Dark and drear was the night. Urged by the furious blast of the
lingering winter-rains, masses of bistre-coloured cloud, like the forms
of unwieldy beasts, rolled heavily over the firmament plain. Whenever
the crescent of the young moon, rising from an horizon sable as the sad
Tamala’s hue,[39] glanced upon the wayfarers, it was no brighter than
the fine tip of an elephant’s tusk protruding from the muddy wave. A
heavy storm was impending; big drops fell in showers from the forest
trees as they groaned under the blast, and beneath the gloomy avenue the
clayey ground gleamed ghastly white. As the Raja and his son advanced,
a faint ray of light, like the line of pure gold streaking the dark
surface of the touchstone, caught their eyes, and directed their
footsteps towards the cemetery.

When Vikram came upon the open space on the riverbank where corpses were
burned, he hesitated for a moment to tread its impure ground. But seeing
his son undismayed, he advanced boldly, trampling upon remnants of
bones, and only covering his mouth with his turband-end.

Presently, at the further extremity of the smashana, or burning ground,
appeared a group. By the lurid flames that flared and flickered round
the half-extinguished funeral pyres, with remnants of their dreadful
loads, Raja Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj could note the several features of
the ill-omened spot. There was an outer circle of hideous bestial forms;
tigers were roaring, and elephants were trumpeting; wolves, whose
foul hairy coats blazed with sparks of bluish phosphoric light, were
devouring the remnants of human bodies; foxes, jackals, and hyenas
were disputing over their prey; whilst bears were chewing the livers of
children. The space within was peopled by a multitude of fiends. There
were the subtle bodies of men that had escaped their grosser frames
prowling about the charnel ground, where their corpses had been reduced
to ashes, or hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which
they were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of
those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs; and
skeletons, whose mouldy bones were held together by bits of blackened
sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim. Malignant witches
with shriveled skins, horrid eyes and distorted forms, crawled
and crouched over the earth; whilst spectres and goblins now stood
motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as if in fits, leaped,
danced, and tumbled before their evocator. The air was filled with
shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning of the storm-wind,
with the hooting of the owl, with the jackal’s long wild cry, and
with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river, from whose banks the
earth-slip thundered in its fall.

In the midst of all, close to the fire which lit up his evil
countenance, sat Shanta-Shil, the jogi, with the banner that denoted
his calling and his magic staff planted in the ground behind him. He
was clad in the ochre-coloured loin-wrap of his class; from his head
streamed long tangled locks of hair like horsehair; his black body was
striped with lines of chalk, and a girdle of thighbones encircled his
waist. His face was smeared with ashes from a funeral pyre, and his
eyes, fixed as those of a statue, gleamed from this mask with an
infernal light of hate. His cheeks were shaven, and he had not forgotten
to draw the horizontal sectarian mark. But this was of blood; and
Vikram, as he drew near saw that he was playing upon a human skull with
two shank bones, making music for the horrid revelry.

Now Raja Vikram, as has been shown by his encounter with Indra’s
watchman, was a bold prince, and he was cautious as he was brave. The
sight of a human being in the midst of these terrors raised his mettle;
he determined to prove himself a hero, and feeling that the critical
moment was now come, he hoped to rid himself and his house forever of
the family curse that hovered over them.

For a moment he thought of the giant’s words, “And remember that it is
lawful and right to strike off his head that would slay thee.” A stroke
with his good sword might at once and effectually put an end to the
danger. But then he remembered that he had passed his royal word to do
the devotee’s bidding that night. Besides, he felt assured that the hour
for action had not yet sounded.

These reflections having passed through his mind with the rapid course
of a star that has lost its honours,[40] Vikram courteously saluted
Shanta-Shil. The jogi briefly replied, “Come sit down, both of ye.” The
father and son took their places, by no means surprised or frightened
by the devil dances before and around them. Presently the valiant Raja
reminded the devotee that he was come to perform his promise, and lastly
asked, “What commands are there for us?”

The jogi replied, “O king, since you have come, just perform one piece
of business. About two kos[41] hence, in a southerly direction, there
is another place where dead bodies are burned; and in that place is a
mimosa tree, on which a body is hanging. Bring it to me immediately.”

Raja Vikram took his son’s hand, unwilling to leave him in such
company; and, catching up a fire-brand, went rapidly away in the proper
direction. He was now certain that Shanta-Shil was the anchorite who,
enraged by his father, had resolved his destruction; and his uppermost
thought was a firm resolve “to breakfast upon his enemy, ere his enemy
could dine upon him.” He muttered this old saying as he went, whilst the
tom-toming of the anchorite upon the skull resounded in his ears,
and the devil-crowd, which had held its peace during his meeting with
Shanta-Shil, broke out again in an infernal din of whoops and screams,
yells and laughter.

The darkness of the night was frightful, the gloom deepened till it was
hardly possible to walk. The clouds opened their fountains, raining so
that you would say they could never rain again. Lightning blazed forth
with more than the light of day, and the roar of the thunder caused the
earth to shake. Baleful gleams tipped the black cones of the trees and
fitfully scampered like fireflies over the waste. Unclean goblins dogged
the travellers and threw themselves upon the ground in their path and
obstructed them in a thousand different ways. Huge snakes, whose mouths
distilled blood and black venom, kept clinging around their legs in the
roughest part of the road, till they were persuaded to loose their hold
either by the sword or by reciting a spell. In fact, there were so many
horrors and such a tumult and noise that even a brave man would have
faltered, yet the king kept on his way.

At length having passed over, somehow or other, a very difficult road,
the Raja arrived at the smashana, or burning place pointed out by the
jogi. Suddenly he sighted the tree where from root to top every branch
and leaf was in a blaze of crimson flame. And when he, still dauntless,
advanced towards it, a clamour continued to be raised, and voices kept
crying, “Kill them! kill them! seize them! seize them! take care that
they do not get away! let them scorch themselves to cinders! let them
suffer the pains of Patala.[42]”

Far from being terrified by this state of things the valiant Raja
increased in boldness, seeing a prospect of an end to his adventure.
Approaching the tree he felt that the fire did not burn him, and so he
sat there for a while to observe the body, which hung, head downwards,
from a branch a little above him.

Its eyes, which were wide open, were of a greenish-brown, and never
twinkled; its hair also was brown,[43] and brown was its face--three
several shades which, notwithstanding, approached one another in an
unpleasant way, as in an over-dried cocoa-nut. Its body was thin and
ribbed like a skeleton or a bamboo framework, and as it held on to a
bough, like a flying fox,[44] by the toe-tips, its drawn muscles stood
out as if they were ropes of coin. Blood it appeared to have none, or
there would have been a decided determination of that curious juice to
the head; and as the Raja handled its skin it felt icy cold and clammy
as might a snake. The only sign of life was the whisking of a ragged
little tail much resembling a goat’s.

Judging from these signs the brave king at once determined the creature
to be a Baital--a Vampire. For a short time he was puzzled to reconcile
the appearance with the words of the giant, who informed him that the
anchorite had hung the oilman’s son to a tree. But soon he explained to
himself the difficulty, remembering the exceeding cunning of jogis
and other reverend men, and determining that his enemy, the better
to deceive him, had doubtless altered the shape and form of the young
oilman’s body.

With this idea, Vikram was pleased, saying, “My trouble has been
productive of fruit.” Remained the task of carrying the Vampire to
Shanta-Shil the devotee. Having taken his sword, the Raja fearlessly
climbed the tree, and ordering his son to stand away from below,
clutched the Vampire’s hair with one hand, and with the other struck
such a blow of the sword, that the bough was cut and the thing fell
heavily upon the ground. Immediately on falling it gnashed its teeth and
began to utter a loud wailing cry like the screams of an infant in pain.
Vikram having heard the sound of its lamentations, was pleased, and
began to say to himself, “This devil must be alive.” Then nimbly sliding
down the trunk, he made a captive of the body, and asked “Who art thou?”

Scarcely, however, had the words passed the royal lips, when the Vampire
slipped through the fingers like a worm, and uttering a loud shout
of laughter, rose in the air with its legs uppermost, and as before
suspended itself by its toes to another bough. And there it swung to and
fro, moved by the violence of its cachinnation.

“Decidedly this is the young oilman!” exclaimed the Raja, after he had
stood for a minute or two with mouth open, gazing upwards and wondering
what he should do next. Presently he directed Dharma Dhwaj not to lose
an instant in laying hands upon the thing when it next might touch the
ground, and then he again swarmed up the tree. Having reached his former
position, he once more seized the Baital’s hair, and with all the force
of his arms--for he was beginning to feel really angry--he tore it from
its hold and dashed it to the ground, saying, “O wretch, tell me who
thou art?”

Then, as before, the Raja slid deftly down the trunk, and hurried to the
aid of his son, who in obedience to orders, had fixed his grasp upon
the Vampire’s neck. Then, too, as before, the Vampire, laughing aloud,
slipped through their fingers and returned to its dangling-place.

To fail twice was too much for Raja Vikram’s temper, which was right
kingly and somewhat hot. This time he bade his son strike the Baital’s
head with his sword. Then, more like a wounded bear of Himalaya than a
prince who had established an era, he hurried up the tree, and directed
a furious blow with his sabre at the Vampire’s lean and calfless legs.
The violence of the stroke made its toes loose their hold of the bough,
and when it touched the ground, Dharma Dhwaj’s blade fell heavily
upon its matted brown hair. But the blows appeared to have lighted on
iron-wood--to judge at least from the behaviour of the Baital, who no
sooner heard the question, “O wretch, who art thou?” than it returned in
loud glee and merriment to its old position.

Five mortal times did Raja Vikram repeat this profitless labour. But
so far from losing heart, he quite entered into the spirit of the
adventure. Indeed he would have continued climbing up that tree and
taking that corpse under his arm--he found his sword useless--and
bringing it down, and asking it who it was, and seeing it slip through
his fingers, six times sixty times, or till the end of the fourth and
present age,[45] had such extreme resolution been required.

However, it was not necessary. On the seventh time of falling, the
Baital, instead of eluding its capturer’s grasp, allowed itself to be
seized, merely remarking that “even the gods cannot resist a thoroughly
obstinate man.”[46] And seeing that the stranger, for the better
protection of his prize, had stripped off his waistcloth and was making
it into a bag, the Vampire thought proper to seek the most favourable
conditions for himself, and asked his conqueror who he was, and what he
was about to do?

“Vile wretch,” replied the breathless hero, “know me to be Vikram the
Great, Raja of Ujjayani, and I bear thee to a man who is amusing himself
by drumming to devils on a skull.”

“Remember the old saying, mighty Vikram!” said the Baital, with a
sneer, “that many a tongue has cut many a throat. I have yielded to thy
resolution and I am about to accompany thee, bound to thy back like a
beggar’s wallet. But hearken to my words, ere we set out upon the way.
I am of a loquacious disposition, and it is well nigh an hour’s walk
between this tree and the place where thy friend sits, favouring his
friends with the peculiar music which they love. Therefore, I shall
try to distract my thoughts, which otherwise might not be of the most
pleasing nature, by means of sprightly tales and profitable reflections.
Sages and men of sense spend their days in the delights of light and
heavy literature, whereas dolts and fools waste time in sleep and
idleness. And I purpose to ask thee a number of questions, concerning
which we will, if it seems fit to thee, make this covenant:

“Whenever thou answerest me, either compelled by Fate or entrapped by my
cunning into so doing, or thereby gratifying thy vanity and conceit,
I leave thee and return to my favourite place and position in the
siras-tree, but when thou shalt remain silent, confused, and at a loss
to reply, either through humility or thereby confessing thine ignorance,
and impotence, and want of comprehension, then will I allow thee, of
mine own free will, to place me before thine employer. Perhaps I should
not say so; it may sound like bribing thee, but--take my counsel, and
mortify thy pride, and assumption, and arrogance, and haughtiness, as
soon as possible. So shalt thou derive from me a benefit which none but
myself can bestow.”

Raja Vikram hearing these rough words, so strange to his royal ear,
winced; then he rejoiced that his heir apparent was not near; then
he looked round at his son Dharma Dhwaj, to see if he was impertinent
enough to be amused by the Baital. But the first glance showed him the
young prince busily employed in pinching and screwing the monster’s
legs, so as to make it fit better into the cloth. Vikram then seized
the ends of the waistcloth, twisted them into a convenient form for
handling, stooped, raised the bundle with a jerk, tossed it over his
shoulder, and bidding his son not to lag behind, set off at a round pace
towards the western end of the cemetery.

The shower had ceased, and, as they gained ground, the weather greatly
improved.

The Vampire asked a few indifferent questions about the wind and
the rain and the mud. When he received no answer, he began to feel
uncomfortable, and he broke out with these words: “O King Vikram, listen
to the true story which I am about to tell thee.”




VIKRAM AND THE VAMPIRE




THE VAMPIRE’S FIRST STORY -- In which a man deceives a woman.

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut, to whose
eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning, the young man, accompanied by the son of his father’s
pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far into the
jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a beautiful “tank [47]”
 of a prodigious size. It was surrounded by short thick walls of fine
baked brick; and flights and ramps of cut-stone steps, half the length
of each face, and adorned with turrets, pendants, and finials, led down
to the water. The substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen
into disrepair, and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose
thick shade the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the
birds sang sweetly; the grey squirrels [48] chirruped joyously as they
coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the pendent llianas
the longtailed monkeys were swinging sportively. The bountiful hand of
Sravana [49] had spread the earthen rampart with a carpet of the softest
grass and many-hued wild flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees
and myriads of bright winged insects; and flocks of water fowl, wild
geese, Brahmini ducks, bitterns, herons, and cranes, male and female,
were feeding on the narrow strip of brilliant green that belted the long
deep pool, amongst the broad-leaved lotuses with the lovely blossoms,
splashing through the pellucid waves, and basking happily in the genial
sun.

The prince and his friend wondered when they saw the beautiful tank in
the midst of a wild forest, and made many vain conjectures about it.
They dismounted, tethered their horses, and threw their weapons upon the
ground; then, having washed their hands and faces, they entered a shrine
dedicated to Mahadeva, and there began to worship the presiding deity.

Whilst they were making their offerings, a bevy of maidens, accompanied
by a crowd of female slaves, descended the opposite flight of steps.
They stood there for a time, talking and laughing and looking about them
to see if any alligators infested the waters. When convinced that the
tank was safe, they disrobed themselves in order to bathe. It was truly
a splendid spectacle.

“Concerning which the less said the better,” interrupted Raja Vikram in
an offended tone.[50]

--but did not last long. The Raja’s daughter--for the principal maiden
was a princess--soon left her companions, who were scooping up water
with their palms and dashing it over one another’s heads, and proceeded
to perform the rites of purification, meditation, and worship. Then she
began strolling with a friend under the shade of a small mango grove.

The prince also left his companion sitting in prayer, and walked forth
into the forest. Suddenly the eyes of the Raja’s son and the Raja’s
daughter met. She started back with a little scream. He was fascinated
by her beauty, and began to say to himself, “O thou vile Karma,[51] why
worriest thou me?”

Hearing this, the maiden smiled encouragement, but the poor youth,
between palpitation of the heart and hesitation about what to say, was
so confused that his tongue crave to his teeth. She raised her eyebrows
a little. There is nothing which women despise in a man more than
modesty, [52] for mo-des-ty--

A violent shaking of the bag which hung behind Vikram’s royal back broke
off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not
cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to preserve more
decorum in his observations.

Still the prince stood before her with downcast eyes and suffused
cheeks: even the spur of contempt failed to arouse his energies. Then
the maiden called to her friend, who was picking jasmine flowers so as
not to witness the scene, and angrily asked why that strange man was
allowed to stand and stare at her? The friend, in hot wrath, threatened
to call the slave, and throw Vajramukut into the pond unless he
instantly went away with his impudence. But as the prince was rooted to
the spot, and really had not heard a word of what had been said to him,
the two women were obliged to make the first move.

As they almost reached the tank, the beautiful maiden turned her head to
see what the poor modest youth was doing.

Vajramukut was formed in every way to catch a woman’s eye. The Raja’s
daughter therefore half forgave him his offence of mod----. Again she
sweetly smiled, disclosing two rows of little opals. Then descending
to the water’s edge, she stooped down and plucked a lotus. This she
worshipped; next she placed it in her hair, then she put it in her ear,
then she bit it with her teeth, then she trod upon it with her foot,
then she raised it up again, and lastly she stuck it in her bosom. After
which she mounted her conveyance and went home to her friends; whilst
the prince, having become thoroughly desponding and drowned in grief at
separation from her, returned to the minister’s son.

“Females!” ejaculated the minister’s son, speaking to himself in a
careless tone, when, his prayer finished, he left the temple, and sat
down upon the tank steps to enjoy the breeze. He presently drew a roll
of paper from under his waist-belt, and in a short time was engrossed
with his study. The women seeing this conduct, exerted themselves in
every possible way of wile to attract his attention and to distract his
soul. They succeeded only so far as to make him roll his head with a
smile, and to remember that such is always the custom of man’s bane;
after which he turned over a fresh page of manuscript. And although he
presently began to wonder what had become of the prince his master, he
did not look up even once from his study.

He was a philosopher, that young man. But after all, Raja Vikram, what
is mortal philosophy? Nothing but another name for indifference! Who was
ever philosophical about a thing truly loved or really hated?--no one!
Philosophy, says Shankharacharya, is either a gift of nature or the
reward of study. But I, the Baital, the devil, ask you, what is a born
philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher
but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher?--a
cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher?--a leuco-phlegmatic old
man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your
Rajaship’s Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such wise fools.

Then the prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, “O
friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra’s
heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the
child of an earthly Raja, I cannot say.”

“Describe her,” said the statesman in embryo.

“Her face,” quoth the prince, “was that of the full moon, her hair like
a swarm of bees hanging from the blossoms of the acacia, the corners of
her eyes touched her ears, her lips were sweet with lunar ambrosia, her
waist was that of a lion, and her walk the walk of a king goose. [53]
As a garment, she was white; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the
jasmine; as a speaker, the kokila bird; as a perfume, musk; as a
beauty, Kamadeva; and as a being, Love. And if she does not come into my
possession I will not live; this I have certainly determined upon.”

The young minister, who had heard his prince say the same thing more
than once before, did not attach great importance to these awful words.
He merely remarked that, unless they mounted at once, night would
surprise them in the forest. Then the two young men returned to their
horses, untethered them, drew on their bridles, saddled them, and
catching up their weapons, rode slowly towards the Raja’s palace.
During the three hours of return hardly a word passed between the
pair. Vajramukut not only avoided speaking; he never once replied till
addressed thrice in the loudest voice.

The young minister put no more questions, “for,” quoth he to himself,
“when the prince wants my counsel, he will apply for it.” In this point
he had borrowed wisdom from his father, who held in peculiar horror the
giving of unasked-for advice. So, when he saw that conversation was
irksome to his master, he held his peace and meditated upon what he
called his “day-thought.” It was his practice to choose every morning
some tough food for reflection, and to chew the cud of it in his mind
at times when, without such employment, his wits would have gone
wool-gathering. You may imagine, Raja Vikram, that with a few years of
this head work, the minister’s son became a very crafty young person.

After the second day the Prince Vajramukut, being restless from grief
at separation, fretted himself into a fever. Having given up writing,
reading, drinking, sleeping, the affairs entrusted to him by his father,
and everything else, he sat down, as he said, to die. He used constantly
to paint the portrait of the beautiful lotus gatherer, and to lie gazing
upon it with tearful eyes; then he would start up and tear it to pieces
and beat his forehead, and begin another picture of a yet more beautiful
face.

At last, as the pradhan’s son had foreseen, he was summoned by the
young Raja, whom he found upon his bed, looking yellow and complaining
bitterly of headache. Frequent discussions upon the subject of the
tender passion had passed between the two youths, and one of them had
ever spoken of it so very disrespectfully that the other felt ashamed
to introduce it. But when his friend, with a view to provoke
communicativeness, advised a course of boiled and bitter herbs and
great attention to diet, quoting the hemistich attributed to the learned
physician Charndatta,

      A fever starve, but feed a cold,

the unhappy Vajramukut’s fortitude abandoned him; he burst into tears,
and exclaimed, “Whosoever enters upon the path of love cannot survive
it; and if (by chance) he should live, what is life to him but a
prolongation of his misery?”

“Yea,” replied the minister’s son, “the sage hath said--

“The road of love is that which hath no beginning nor end; Take thou heed
of thyself, man I ere thou place foot upon it.

“And the wise, knowing that there are three things whose effect upon
himself no man can foretell--namely, desire of woman, the dice-box, and
the drinking of ardent spirits--find total abstinence from them the best
of rules. Yet, after all, if there is no cow, we must milk the bull.”

The advice was, of course, excellent, but the hapless lover could not
help thinking that on this occasion it came a little too late. However,
after a pause he returned to the subject and said, “I have ventured
to tread that dangerous way, be its end pain or pleasure, happiness or
destruction.” He then hung down his head and sighed from the bottom of
his heart.

“She is the person who appeared to us at the tank?” asked the pradhan’s
son, moved to compassion by the state of his master.

The prince assented.

“O great king,” resumed the minister’s son, “at the time of going away
had she said anything to you? or had you said anything to her?”

“Nothing!” replied the other laconically, when he found his friend
beginning to take an interest in the affair.

“Then,” said the minister’s son, “it will be exceedingly difficult to
get possession of her.”

“Then,” repeated the Raja’s son, “I am doomed to death; to an early and
melancholy death!”

“Humph!” ejaculated the young statesman rather impatiently, “did she
make any sign, or give any hint? Let me know all that happened: half
confidences are worse than none.”

Upon which the prince related everything that took place by the side
of the tank, bewailing the false shame which had made him dumb, and
concluding with her pantomime.

The pradhan’s son took thought for a while. He thereupon seized the
opportunity of representing to his master all the evil effects of
bashfulness when women are concerned, and advised him, as he would be a
happy lover, to brazen his countenance for the next interview.

Which the young Raja faithfully promised to do.

“And, now,” said the other, “be comforted, O my master! I know her name
and her dwelling-place. When she suddenly plucked the lotus flower and
worshipped it, she thanked the gods for having blessed her with a sight
of your beauty.”

Vajramukut smiled, the first time for the last month.

“When she applied it to her ear, it was as if she would have explained
to thee, ‘I am a daughter of the Carnatic: [54] and when she bit it with
her teeth, she meant to say that ‘My father is Raja Dantawat, [55]’ who,
by-the-bye, has been, is, and ever will be, a mortal foe to thy father.”

Vajramukut shuddered.

“When she put it under her foot it meant, ‘My name is Padmavati. [56]’”

Vajramukut uttered a cry of joy.

“And when she placed it in her bosom, ‘You are truly dwelling in my
heart’ was meant to be understood.”

At these words the young Raja started up full of new life, and after
praising with enthusiasm the wondrous sagacity of his dear friend,
begged him by some contrivance to obtain the permission of his parents,
and to conduct him to her city. The minister’s son easily got leave for
Vajramukut to travel, under pretext that his body required change
of water, and his mind change of scene. They both dressed and armed
themselves for the journey, and having taken some jewels, mounted their
horses and followed the road in that direction in which the princess had
gone.

Arrived after some days at the capital of the Carnatic, the minister’s
son having disguised his master and himself in the garb of travelling
traders, alighted and pitched his little tent upon a clear bit of ground
in one of the suburbs. He then proceeded to inquire for a wise woman,
wanting, he said, to have his fortune told. When the prince asked
him what this meant, he replied that elderly dames who professionally
predict the future are never above ministering to the present, and
therefore that, in such circumstances, they are the properest persons to
be consulted.

“Is this a treatise upon the subject of immorality, devil?” demanded the
King Vikram ferociously. The Baital declared that it was not, but that
he must tell his story.

The person addressed pointed to an old woman who, seated before the door
of her hut, was spinning at her wheel. Then the young men went up to her
with polite salutations and said, “Mother, we are travelling traders,
and our stock is coming after us; we have come on in advance for the
purpose of finding a place to live in. If you will give us a house, we
will remain there and pay you highly.”

The old woman, who was a physiognomist as well as a fortune-teller,
looked at the faces of the young men and liked them, because their brows
were wide, and their mouths denoted generosity. Having listened to their
words, she took pity upon them and said kindly, “This hovel is yours, my
masters, remain here as long as you please.” Then she led them into an
inner room, again welcomed them, lamented the poorness of her abode, and
begged them to lie down and rest themselves.

After some interval of time the old woman came to them once more, and
sitting down began to gossip. The minister’s son upon this asked her,
“How is it with thy family, thy relatives, and connections; and what are
thy means of subsistence?” She replied, “My son is a favourite servant
in the household of our great king Dantawat, and your slave is the
wet-nurse of the Princess Padmavati, his eldest child. From the coming
on of old age,” she added, “I dwell in this house, but the king provides
for my eating and drinking. I go once a day to see the girl, who is a
miracle of beauty and goodness, wit and accomplishments, and returning
thence, I bear my own griefs at home. [57]”

In a few days the young Vajramukut had, by his liberality, soft speech,
and good looks, made such progress in nurse Lakshmi’s affections that,
by the advice of his companion, he ventured to broach the subject ever
nearest his heart. He begged his hostess, when she went on the morrow
to visit the charming Padmavati, that she would be kind enough to slip a
bit of paper into the princess’s hand.

“Son,” she replied, delighted with the proposal--and what old woman
would not be?--“there is no need for putting off so urgent an affair
till the morrow. Get your paper ready, and I will immediately give it.”

Trembling with pleasure, the prince ran to find his friend, who was
seated in the garden reading, as usual, and told him what the old nurse
had engaged to do. He then began to debate about how he should write
his letter, to cull sentences and to weigh phrases; whether “light of my
eyes” was not too trite, and “blood of my liver” rather too forcible. At
this the minister’s son smiled, and bade the prince not trouble his head
with composition. He then drew his inkstand from his waist shawl, nibbed
a reed pen, and choosing a piece of pink and flowered paper, he wrote
upon it a few lines. He then folded it, gummed it, sketched a lotus
flower upon the outside, and handing it to the young prince, told him to
give it to their hostess, and that all would be well.

The old woman took her staff in her hand and hobbled straight to the
palace. Arrived there, she found the Raja’s daughter sitting alone in
her apartment. The maiden, seeing her nurse, immediately arose,
and making a respectful bow, led her to a seat and began the most
affectionate inquiries. After giving her blessing and sitting for
some time and chatting about indifferent matters, the nurse said,
“O daughter! in infancy I reared and nourished thee, now the Bhagwan
(Deity) has rewarded me by giving thee stature, beauty, health, and
goodness. My heart only longs to see the happiness of thy womanhood,
[58] after which I shall depart in peace. I implore thee read this
paper, given to me by the handsomest and the properest young man that my
eyes have ever seen.”

The princess, glancing at the lotus on the outside of the note, slowly
unfolded it and perused its contents, which were as follows:

                     1.

                 She was to me the pearl that clings
                      To sands all hid from mortal sight
                 Yet fit for diadems of kings,
                      The pure and lovely light.

                     2.

                 She was to me the gleam of sun
                      That breaks the gloom of wintry day
                 One moment shone my soul upon,
                      Then passed--how soon!--away.

                     3.

                 She was to me the dreams of bliss
                      That float the dying eyes before,
                 For one short hour shed happiness,
                      And fly to bless no more.

                     4.

                 O light, again upon me shine;
                      O pearl, again delight my eyes;
                 O dreams of bliss, again be mine!--
                      No! earth may not be Paradise.

I must not forget to remark, parenthetically, that the minister’s son,
in order to make these lines generally useful, had provided them with a
last stanza in triplicate. “For lovers,” he said sagely, “are either in
the optative mood, the desperative, or the exultative.” This time he had
used the optative. For the desperative he would substitute:

                     4.

                 The joys of life lie dead, lie dead,
                      The light of day is quenched in gloom
                 The spark of hope my heart hath fled
                      What now witholds me from the tomb


And this was the termination exultative, as he called it:

                     4.

                 O joy I the pearl is mine again,
                      Once more the day is bright and clear
                 And now ‘tis real, then ‘twas vain,
                      My dream of bliss--O heaven is here!


The Princess Padmavati having perused this doggrel with a contemptuous
look, tore off the first word of the last line, and said to the nurse,
angrily, “Get thee gone, O mother of Yama, [59] O unfortunate creature,
and take back this answer”--giving her the scrap of paper--“to the fool
who writes such bad verses. I wonder where he studied the humanities.
Begone, and never do such an action again!”

The old nurse, distressed at being so treated, rose up and returned
home. Vajramukut was too agitated to await her arrival, so he went to
meet her on the way. Imagine his disappointment when she gave him the
fatal word and repeated to him exactly what happened, not forgetting
to describe a single look! He felt tempted to plunge his sword into his
bosom; but Fortune interfered, and sent him to consult his confidant.

“Be not so hasty and desperate, my prince,” said the pradhan’s son,
seeing his wild grief; “you have not understood her meaning. Later in
life you will be aware of the fact that, in nine cases out of ten, a
woman’s ‘no’ is a distinct ‘yes.’ This morning’s work has been good; the
maiden asked where you learnt the humanities, which being interpreted
signifies ‘Who are you?”’

On the next day the prince disclosed his rank to old Lakshmi, who
naturally declared that she had always known it. The trust they reposed
in her made her ready to address Padmavati once more on the forbidden
subject. So she again went to the palace, and having lovingly greeted
her nursling, said to her, “The Raja’s son, whose heart thou didst
fascinate on the brim of the tank, on the fifth day of the moon, in
the light half of the month Yeth, has come to my house, and sends this
message to thee: ‘Perform what you promised;’ we have now come; and
I also tell thee that this prince is worthy of thee: just as thou art
beautiful, so is he endowed with all good qualities of mind and body.”

When Padmavati heard this speech she showed great anger, and, rubbing
sandal on her beautiful hands, she slapped the old woman’s cheeks, and
cried, “Wretch, Daina (witch)! get out of my house; did I not forbid
thee to talk such folly in my presence?”

The lover and the nurse were equally distressed at having taken the
advice of the young minister, till he explained what the crafty damsel
meant. “When she smeared the sandal on her ten fingers,” he explained,
“and struck the old woman on the face, she signified that when the
remaining ten moonlight nights shall have passed away she will meet
you in the dark.” At the same time he warned his master that to all
appearances the lady Padmavati was far too clever to make a comfortable
wife. The minister’s son especially hated talented, intellectual, and
strong-minded women; he had been heard to describe the torments of
Naglok [60] as the compulsory companionship of a polemical divine and a
learned authoress, well stricken in years and of forbidding aspect, as
such persons mostly are. Amongst womankind he admired--theoretically,
as became a philosopher--the small, plump, laughing, chattering,
unintellectual, and material-minded. And therefore--excuse the
digression, Raja Vikram--he married an old maid, tall, thin, yellow,
strictly proper, cold-mannered, a conversationist, and who prided
herself upon spirituality. But more wonderful still, after he did marry
her, he actually loved her--what an incomprehensible being is man in
these matters!

To return, however. The pradhan’s son, who detected certain symptoms of
strong-mindedness in the Princess Padmavati, advised his lord to be wise
whilst wisdom availed him. This sage counsel was, as might be guessed,
most ungraciously rejected by him for whose benefit it was intended.
Then the sensible young statesman rated himself soundly for having
broken his father’s rule touching advice, and atoned for it by blindly
forwarding the views of his master.

After the ten nights of moonlight had passed, the old nurse was again
sent to the palace with the usual message. This time Padmavati put
saffron on three of her fingers, and again left their marks on the
nurse’s cheek. The minister’s son explained that this was to crave delay
for three days, and that on the fourth the lover would have access to
her.

When the time had passed the old woman again went and inquired after her
health and well-being. The princess was as usual very wroth, and having
personally taken her nurse to the western gate, she called her “Mother
of the elephant’s trunk, [61]” and drove her out with threats of
the bastinado if she ever came back. This was reported to the young
statesman, who, after a few minutes’ consideration, said, “The
explanation of this matter is, that she has invited you to-morrow, at
nighttime, to meet her at this very gate.

“When brown shadows fell upon the face of earth, and here and there a
star spangled the pale heavens, the minister’s son called Vajramukut,
who had been engaged in adorning himself at least half that day. He
had carefully shaved his cheeks and chin; his mustachio was trimmed and
curled; he had arched his eyebrows by plucking out with tweezers
the fine hairs around them; he had trained his curly musk-coloured
love-locks to hang gracefully down his face; he had drawn broad lines of
antimony along his eyelids, a most brilliant sectarian mark was affixed
to his forehead, the colour of his lips had been heightened by chewing
betel-nut--

“One would imagine that you are talking of a silly girl, not of a
prince, fiend!” interrupted Vikram, who did not wish his son to hear
what he called these fopperies and frivolities.

--and whitened his neck by having it shaved (continued the Baital,
speaking quickly, as if determined not to be interrupted), and reddened
the tips of his ears by squeezing them, and made his teeth shine by
rubbing copper powder into the roots, and set off the delicacy of his
fingers by staining the tips with henna. He had not been less careful
with his dress: he wore a well-arranged turband, which had taken him at
least two hours to bind, and a rich suit of brown stuff chosen for the
adventure he was about to attempt, and he hung about his person a number
of various weapons, so as to appear a hero--which young damsels admire.

Vajramukut asked his friend how he looked, and smiled happily when the
other replied “Admirable!” His happiness was so great that he feared
it might not last, and he asked the minister’s son how best to conduct
himself?

“As a conqueror, my prince!” answered that astute young man, “if it so
be that you would be one. When you wish to win a woman, always impose
upon her. Tell her that you are her master, and she will forthwith
believe herself to be your servant. Inform her that she loves you, and
forthwith she will adore you. Show her that you care nothing for her,
and she will think of nothing but you. Prove to her by your demeanour
that you consider her a slave, and she will become your pariah. But
above all things--excuse me if I repeat myself too often--beware of the
fatal virtue which men call modesty and women sheepishness. Recollect
the trouble it has given us, and the danger which we have incurred:
all this might have been managed at a tank within fifteen miles of your
royal father’s palace. And allow me to say that you may still thank your
stars: in love a lost opportunity is seldom if ever recovered. The time
to woo a woman is the moment you meet her, before she has had time to
think; allow her the use of reflection and she may escape the net. And
after avoiding the rock of Modesty, fall not, I conjure you, into the
gulf of Security. I fear the lady Padmavati, she is too clever and too
prudent. When damsels of her age draw the sword of Love, they throw away
the scabbard of Precaution. But you yawn--I weary you--it is time for us
to move.”

Two watches of the night had passed, and there was profound stillness on
earth. The young men then walked quietly through the shadows, till they
reached the western gate of the palace, and found the wicket ajar. The
minister’s son peeped in and saw the porter dozing, stately as a Brahman
deep in the Vedas, and behind him stood a veiled woman seemingly waiting
for somebody. He then returned on tiptoe to the place where he had left
his master, and with a parting caution against modesty and security,
bade him fearlessly glide through the wicket. Then having stayed a short
time at the gate listening with anxious ear, he went back to the old
woman’s house.

Vajramukut penetrating to the staircase, felt his hand grasped by the
veiled figure, who motioning him to tread lightly, led him quickly
forwards. They passed under several arches, through dim passages and
dark doorways, till at last running up a flight of stone steps they
reached the apartments of the princess.

Vajramukut was nearly fainting as the flood of splendour broke upon him.
Recovering himself he gazed around the rooms, and presently a tumult of
delight invaded his soul, and his body bristled with joy. [62] The scene
was that of fairyland. Golden censers exhaled the most costly perfumes,
and gemmed vases bore the most beautiful flowers; silver lamps
containing fragrant oil illuminated doors whose panels were wonderfully
decorated, and walls adorned with pictures in which such figures were
formed that on seeing them the beholder was enchanted. On one side of
the room stood a bed of flowers and a couch covered with brocade of
gold, and strewed with freshly-culled jasmine flowers. On the other
side, arranged in proper order, were attar holders, betel-boxes,
rose-water bottles, trays, and silver cases with four partitions for
essences compounded of rose leaves, sugar, and spices, prepared sandal
wood, saffron, and pods of musk. Scattered about a stuccoed floor white
as crystal, were coloured caddies of exquisite confections, and in
others sweetmeats of various kinds.[63] Female attendants clothed in
dresses of various colours were standing each according to her rank,
with hands respectfully joined. Some were reading plays and beautiful
poems, others danced and others performed with glittering fingers and
flashing arms on various instruments--the ivory lute, the ebony pipe
and the silver kettledrum. In short, all the means and appliances of
pleasure and enjoyment were there; and any description of the appearance
of the apartments, which were the wonder of the age, is impossible.

Then another veiled figure, the beautiful Princess Padmavati, came up
and disclosed herself, and dazzled the eyes of her delighted Vajramukut.
She led him into an alcove, made him sit down, rubbed sandal powder upon
his body, hung a garland of jasmine flowers round his neck, sprinkled
rose-water over his dress, and began to wave over his head a fan of
peacock feathers with a golden handle.

Said the prince, who despite all efforts could not entirely shake off
his unhappy habit of being modest, “Those very delicate hands of yours
are not fit to ply the pankha.[64] Why do you take so much trouble? I
am cool and refreshed by the sight of you. Do give the fan to me and sit
down.”

“Nay, great king!” replied Padmavati, with the most fascinating of
smiles, “you have taken so much trouble for my sake in coming here, it
is right that I perform service for you.”

Upon which her favourite slave, taking the pankha from the hand of the
princess, exclaimed, “This is my duty. I will perform the service; do
you two enjoy yourselves!”

The lovers then began to chew betel, which, by the bye, they disposed of
in little agate boxes which they drew from their pockets, and they were
soon engaged in the tenderest conversation.

Here the Baital paused for a while, probably to take breath. Then he
resumed his tale as follows:

In the meantime, it became dawn; the princess concealed him; and when
night returned they again engaged in the same innocent pleasures.
Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can, the youth’s
felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply enamoured, barely
a score of years old, and he had been strictly brought up by serious
parents. He therefore resigned himself entirely to the siren for whom he
willingly forgot the world, and he wondered at his good fortune, which
had thrown in his way a conquest richer than all the mines of Meru.[65]
He could not sufficiently admire his Padmavati’s grace, beauty, bright
wit, and numberless accomplishments. Every morning, for vanity’s sake,
he learned from her a little useless knowledge in verse as well as
prose, for instance, the saying of the poet--

     Enjoy the present hour, ‘tis thine; be this, O man, thy law;
     Who e’er resew the yester? Who the morrow e’er foresaw?

And this highly philosophical axiom--

     Eat, drink, and love--the rest’s not worth a fillip.

“By means of which he hoped, Raja Vikram!” said the demon, not heeding
his royal carrier’s “ughs” and “poohs,” “to become in course of time
almost as clever as his mistress.”

Padmavati, being, as you have seen, a maiden of superior mind, was
naturally more smitten by her lover’s dulness than by any other of his
qualities; she adored it, it was such a contrast to herself.[66] At
first she did what many clever women do--she invested him with the
brightness of her own imagination. Still water, she pondered, runs deep;
certainly under this disguise must lurk a brilliant fancy, a penetrating
but a mature and ready judgment--are they not written by nature’s hand
on that broad high brow? With such lovely mustachios can he be aught but
generous, noble-minded, magnanimous? Can such eyes belong to any but a
hero? And she fed the delusion. She would smile upon him with intense
fondness, when, after wasting hours over a few lines of poetry, he
would misplace all the adjectives and barbarously entreat the metre.
She laughed with gratification, when, excited by the bright sayings that
fell from her lips, the youth put forth some platitude, dim as the lamp
in the expiring fire-fly. When he slipped in grammar she saw malice
under it, when he retailed a borrowed jest she called it a good one, and
when he used--as princes sometimes will--bad language, she discovered in
it a charming simplicity.

At first she suspected that the stratagems which had won her heart were
the results of a deep-laid plot proceeding from her lover. But clever
women are apt to be rarely sharp-sighted in every matter which concerns
themselves. She frequently determined that a third was in the secret.
She therefore made no allusion to it. Before long the enamoured
Vajramukut had told her everything, beginning with the diatribe against
love pronounced by the minister’s son, and ending with the solemn
warning that she, the pretty princess, would some day or other play her
husband a foul trick.

“If I do not revenge myself upon him,” thought the beautiful Padmavati,
smiling like an angel as she listened to the youth’s confidence, “may I
become a gardener’s ass in the next birth!”

Having thus registered a vow, she broke silence, and praised to the
skies the young pradhan’s wisdom and sagacity; professed herself ready
from gratitude to become his slave, and only hoped that one day or
other she might meet that true friend by whose skill her soul had been
gratified in its dearest desire. “Only,” she concluded, “I am convinced
that now my Vajramukut knows every corner of his little Padmavati’s
heart, he will never expect her to do anything but love, admire, adore
and kiss him!” Then suiting the action to the word, she convinced him
that the young minister had for once been too crabbed and cynic in his
philosophy.

But after the lapse of a month Vajramukut, who had eaten and drunk and
slept a great deal too much, and who had not once hunted, became bilious
in body and in mind melancholic. His face turned yellow, and so did
the whites of his eyes; he yawned, as liver patients generally do,
complained occasionally of sick headaches, and lost his appetite:
he became restless and anxious, and once when alone at night he thus
thought aloud: “I have given up country, throne, home, and everything
else, but the friend by means of whom this happiness was obtained I
have not seen for the long length of thirty days. What will he say to
himself, and how can I know what has happened to him?”

In this state of things he was sitting, and in the meantime the
beautiful princess arrived. She saw through the matter, and lost not a
moment in entering upon it. She began by expressing her astonishment at
her lover’s fickleness and fondness for change, and when he was ready
to wax wroth, and quoted the words of the sage, “A barren wife may be
superseded by another in the eighth year; she whose children all die, in
the tenth; she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh; she
who scolds, without delay,” thinking that she alluded to his love, she
smoothed his temper by explaining that she referred to his forgetting
his friend. “How is it possible, O my soul,” she asked with the softest
of voices, that thou canst happiness here whilst thy heart is wandering
there? Why didst thou conceal this from me, O astute one? Was it for
fear of distressing me? Think better of thy wife than to suppose that
she would ever separate thee from one to whom we both owe so much!

After this Padmavati advised, nay ordered, her lover to go forth that
night, and not to return till his mind was quite at ease, and she begged
him to take a few sweetmeats and other trifles as a little token of her
admiration and regard for the clever young man of whom she had heard so
much.

Vajramukut embraced her with a transport of gratitude, which so inflamed
her anger, that fearing lest the cloak of concealment might fall from
her countenance, she went away hurriedly to find the greatest delicacies
which her comfit boxes contained. Presently she returned, carrying a bag
of sweetmeats of every kind for her lover, and as he rose up to depart,
she put into his hand a little parcel of sugar-plums especially intended
for the friend; they were made up with her own delicate fingers, and
they would please, she flattered herself, even his discriminating
palate.

The young prince, after enduring a number of farewell embraces and
hopings for a speedy return, and last words ever beginning again,
passed safely through the palace gate, and with a relieved aspect walked
briskly to the house of the old nurse. Although it was midnight his
friend was still sitting on his mat.

The two young men fell upon one another’s bosoms and embraced
affectionately. They then began to talk of matters nearest their hearts.
The Raja’s son wondered at seeing the jaded and haggard looks of his
companion, who did not disguise that they were caused by his anxiety as
to what might have happened to his friend at the hand of so talented and
so superior a princess. Upon which Vajramukut, who now thought Padmavati
an angel, and his late abode a heaven, remarked with formality--and two
blunders to one quotation--that abilities properly directed win for a
man the happiness of both worlds.

The pradhan’s son rolled his head.

“Again on your hobby-horse, nagging at talent whenever you find it in
others!” cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted
Padmavati. “Surely you are jealous of her!” he resumed, anything but
pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; “jealous of
her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the very best creature
in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are, would own it if you only
knew all the kind messages she sent, and the little pleasant surprise
that she has prepared for you. There! take and eat; they are made by her
own dear hands!” cried the young Raja, producing the sweetmeats. “As she
herself taught me to say--

         Thank God I am a man,
     Not a philosopher!”

“The kind messages she sent me! The pleasant surprise she has prepared
for me!” repeated the minister’s son in a hard, dry tone. “My lord will
be pleased to tell me how she heard of my name?”

“I was sitting one night,” replied the prince, “in anxious thought about
you, when at that moment the princess coming in and seeing my condition,
asked, ‘Why are you thus sad? Explain the cause to me.’ I then gave
her an account of your cleverness, and when she heard it she gave me
permission to go and see you, and sent these sweetmeats for you: eat
them and I shall be pleased.”

“Great king!” rejoined the young statesman, “one thing vouchsafe to
hear from me. You have not done well in that you have told my name.
You should never let a woman think that your left hand knows the secret
which she confided to your right, much less that you have shared it to
a third person. Secondly, you did evil in allowing her to see the
affection with which you honour your unworthy servant--a woman ever
hates her lover’s or husband’s friend.”

“What could I do?” rejoined the young Raja, in a querulous tone of
voice. “When I love a woman I like to tell her everything--to have no
secrets from her--to consider her another self----”

“Which habit,” interrupted the pradhan’s son, “you will lose when you
are a little older, when you recognize the fact that love is nothing but
a bout, a game of skill between two individuals of opposite sexes: the
one seeking to gain as much, and the other striving to lose as little as
possible; and that the sharper of the twain thus met on the chessboard
must, in the long run, win. And reticence is but a habit. Practise it
for a year, and you will find it harder to betray than to conceal your
thoughts. It hath its joy also. Is there no pleasure, think you, when
suppressing an outbreak of tender but fatal confidence in saying to
yourself, ‘O, if she only knew this?’ ‘O, if she did but suspect that?’
Returning, however, to the sugar-plums, my life to a pariah’s that they
are poisoned!”

“Impossible!” exclaimed the prince, horror-struck at the thought;
“what you say, surely no one ever could do. If a mortal fears not his
fellow-mortal, at least he dreads the Deity.”

“I never yet knew,” rejoined the other, “what a woman in love does fear.
However, prince, the trial is easy. Come here, Muti!” cried he to the
old woman’s dog, “and off with thee to that three-headed kinsman of
thine, that attends upon his amiable-looking master.[67]”

Having said this, he threw one of the sweetmeats to the dog; the animal
ate it, and presently writhing and falling down, died.

“The wretch! O the wretch!” cried Vajramukut, transported with wonder
and anger. “And I loved her! But now it is all over. I dare not
associate with such a calamity!”

“What has happened, my lord, has happened!” quoth the minister’s son
calmly. “I was prepared for something of this kind from so talented a
princess. None commit such mistakes, such blunders, such follies as your
clever women; they cannot even turn out a crime decently executed. O
give me dulness with one idea, one aim, one desire. O thrice blessed
dulness that combines with happiness, power.”

This time Vajramukut did not defend talent.

“And your slave did his best to warn you against perfidy. But now my
heart is at rest. I have tried her strength. She has attempted and
failed; the defeat will prevent her attempting again--just yet. But let
me ask you to put to yourself one question. Can you be happy without
her?”

“Brother!” replied the prince, after a pause, “I cannot”; and he blushed
as he made the avowal.

“Well,” replied the other, “better confess then conceal that fact;
we must now meet her on the battle-field, and beat her at her own
weapons--cunning. I do not willingly begin treachery with women,
because, in the first place, I don’t like it; and secondly, I know that
they will certainly commence practicing it upon me, after which I hold
myself justified in deceiving them. And probably this will be a good
wife; remember that she intended to poison me, not you. During the last
month my fear has been lest my prince had run into the tiger’s brake.
Tell me, my lord, when does the princess expect you to return to her?”

“She bade me,” said the young Raja, “not to return till my mind was
quite at ease upon the subject of my talented friend.”

“This means that she expects you back to-morrow night, as you cannot
enter the palace before. And now I will retire to my cot, as it is there
that I am wont to ponder over my plans. Before dawn my thought shall
mature one which must place the beautiful Padmavati in your power.”

“A word before parting,” exclaimed the prince “you know my father has
already chosen a spouse for me; what will he say if I bring home a
second?”

“In my humble opinion,” said the minister’s son rising to retire, “woman
is a monogamous, man a polygamous, creature, a fact scarcely established
in physiological theory, but very observable in every-day practice. For
what said the poet?--

          Divorce, friend! Re-wed thee! The spring draweth near,[68]
          And a wife’s but an almanac--good for the year.

If your royal father say anything to you, refer him to what he himself
does.”

Reassured by these words, Vajramukut bade his friend a cordial
good-night and sought his cot, where he slept soundly, despite the
emotions of the last few hours. The next day passed somewhat slowly. In
the evening, when accompanying his master to the palace, the minister’s
son gave him the following directions.

“Our object, dear my lord, is how to obtain possession of the princess.
Take, then, this trident, and hide it carefully when you see her show
the greatest love and affection. Conceal what has happened, and when
she, wondering at your calmness, asks about me, tell her that last night
I was weary and out of health, that illness prevented my eating her
sweetmeats, but that I shall eat them for supper to-night. When she goes
to sleep, then, taking off her jewels and striking her left leg with the
trident, instantly come away to me. But should she lie awake, rub upon
your thumb a little of this--do not fear, it is only a powder of
grubs fed on verdigris--and apply it to her nostrils. It would make an
elephant senseless, so be careful how you approach it to your own face.”

Vajramukut embraced his friend, and passed safely through the palace
gate. He found Padmavati awaiting him; she fell upon his bosom and
looked into his eyes, and deceived herself, as clever women will do.
Overpowered by her joy and satisfaction, she now felt certain that
her lover was hers eternally, and that her treachery had not been
discovered; so the beautiful princess fell into a deep sleep.

Then Vajramukut lost no time in doing as the minister’s son had advised,
and slipped out of the room, carrying off Padmavati’s jewels and
ornaments. His counsellor having inspected them, took up a sack and made
signs to his master to follow him. Leaving the horses and baggage at
the nurse’s house, they walked to a burning-place outside the city. The
minister’s son there buried his dress, together with that of the prince,
and drew from the sack the costume of a religious ascetic: he assumed
this himself, and gave to his companion that of a disciple. Then quoth
the guru (spiritual preceptor) to his chela (pupil), “Go, youth, to the
bazar, and sell these jewels, remembering to let half the jewellers in
the place see the things, and if any one lay hold of thee, bring him to
me.”

Upon which, as day had dawned, Vajramukut carried the princess’s
ornaments to the market, and entering the nearest goldsmith’s shop,
offered to sell them, and asked what they were worth. As your majesty
well knows, gardeners, tailors, and goldsmiths are proverbially
dishonest, and this man was no exception to the rule. He looked at the
pupil’s face and wondered, because he had brought articles whose value
he did not appear to know. A thought struck him that he might make a
bargain which would fill his coffers, so he offered about a thousandth
part of the price. This the pupil rejected, because he wished the affair
to go further. Then the goldsmith, seeing him about to depart, sprang up
and stood in the door way, threatening to call the officers of justice
if the young man refused to give up the valuables which he said had
lately been stolen from his shop. As the pupil only laughed at this,
the goldsmith thought seriously of executing his threat, hesitating only
because he knew that the officers of justice would gain more than he
could by that proceeding. As he was still in doubt a shadow darkened
his shop, and in entered the chief jeweller of the city. The moment the
ornaments were shown to him he recognized them, and said, “These jewels
belong to Raja Dantawat’s daughter; I know them well, as I set them only
a few months ago!” Then he turned to the disciple, who still held the
valuables in his hand, and cried, “Tell me truly whence you received
them?”

While they were thus talking, a crowd of ten or twenty persons had
collected, and at length the report reached the superintendent of the
archers. He sent a soldier to bring before him the pupil, the goldsmith,
and the chief jeweller, together with the ornaments. And when all were
in the hall of justice, he looked at the jewels and said to the young
man, “Tell me truly, whence have you obtained these?”

“My spiritual preceptor,” said Vajramukut, pretending great fear, “who
is now worshipping in the cemetery outside the town, gave me these white
stones, with an order to sell them. How know I whence he obtained them?
Dismiss me, my lord, for I am an innocent man.”

“Let the ascetic be sent for,” commanded the kotwal.[69] Then, having
taken both of them, along with the jewels, into the presence of King
Dantawat, he related the whole circumstances.

“Master,” said the king on hearing the statement, “whence have you
obtained these jewels?”

The spiritual preceptor, before deigning an answer, pulled from under
his arm the hide of a black antelope, which he spread out and smoothed
deliberately before using it as an asan.[70] He then began to finger a
rosary of beads each as large as an egg, and after spending nearly an
hour in mutterings and in rollings of the head, he looked fixedly at the
Raja, and repined:

“By Shiva! great king, they are mine own. On the fourteenth of the dark
half of the moon at night, I had gone into a place where dead bodies are
burned, for the purpose of accomplishing a witch’s incantation. After
long and toilsome labour she appeared, but her demeanour was so unruly
that I was forced to chastise her. I struck her with this, my trident,
on the left leg, if memory serves me. As she continued to be refractory,
in order to punish her I took off all her jewels and clothes, and told
her to go where she pleased. Even this had little effect upon her--never
have I looked upon so perverse a witch. In this way the jewels came into
my possession.”

Raja Dantawat was stunned by these words. He begged the ascetic not
to leave the palace for a while, and forthwith walked into the private
apartments of the women. Happening first to meet the queen dowager,
he said to her, “Go, without losing a minute, O my mother, and look at
Padmavati’s left leg, and see if there is a mark or not, and what sort
of a mark!” Presently she returned, and coming to the king said, “Son,
I find thy daughter lying upon her bed, and complaining that she has met
with an accident; and indeed Padmavati must be in great pain. I found
that some sharp instrument with three points had wounded her. The girl
says that a nail hurt her, but I never yet heard of a nail making
three holes. However, we must all hasten, or there will be erysipelas,
tumefaction, gangrene, mortification, amputation, and perhaps death
in the house,” concluded the old queen, hurrying away in the pleasing
anticipation of these ghastly consequences.

For a moment King Dantawat’s heart was ready to break. But he was
accustomed to master his feelings; he speedily applied the reins of
reflection to the wild steed of passion. He thought to himself, “the
affairs of one’s household, the intentions of one’s heart, and whatever
one’s losses may be, should not be disclosed to any one. Since Padmavati
is a witch, she is no longer my daughter. I will verily go forth and
consult the spiritual preceptor.”

With these words the king went outside, where the guru was still sitting
upon his black hide, making marks with his trident on the floor. Having
requested that the pupil might be sent away, and having cleared the
room, he said to the jogi, “O holy man! what punishment for the heinous
crime of witchcraft is awarded to a woman in the Dharma-Shastra [71]?”

“Great king!” replied the devotee, “in the Dharma Shastra it is thus
written: ‘If a Brahman, a cow, a woman, a child, or any other person
whatsoever who may be dependent on us, should be guilty of a perfidious
act, their punishment is that they be banished the country.’ However
much they may deserve death, we must not spill their blood, as
Lakshmi[72] flies in horror from the deed.”

Hearing these words the Raja dismissed the guru with many thanks and
large presents. He waited till nightfall and then ordered a band of
trusty men to seize Padmavati without alarming the household, and to
carry her into a distant jungle full of fiends, tigers, and bears, and
there to abandon her.

In the meantime, the ascetic and his pupil hurrying to the cemetery
resumed their proper dresses; they then went to the old nurse’s house,
rewarded her hospitality till she wept bitterly, girt on their weapons,
and mounting their horses, followed the party which issued from the gate
of King Dantawat’s palace. And it may easily be believed that they found
little difficulty in persuading the poor girl to exchange her chance in
the wild jungle for the prospect of becoming Vajramukut’s wife--lawfully
wedded at Benares. She did not even ask if she was to have a rival in
the house,--a question which women, you know, never neglect to put
under usual circumstances. After some days the two pilgrims of one love
arrived at the house of their fathers, and to all, both great and small,
excess in joy came.

“Now, Raja Vikram!” said the Baital, “you have not spoken much;
doubtless you are engrossed by the interest of a story wherein a man
beats a woman at her own weapon--deceit. But I warn you that you will
assuredly fall into Narak (the infernal regions) if you do not make
up your mind upon and explain this matter. Who was the most to blame
amongst these four? the lover[73] the lover’s friend, the girl, or the
father?”

“For my part I think Padmavati was the worst, she being at the bottom of
all their troubles,” cried Dharma Dhwaj. The king said something about
young people and the two senses of seeing and hearing, but his son’s
sentiment was so sympathetic that he at once pardoned the interruption.
At length, determined to do justice despite himself, Vikram said, “Raja
Dantawat is the person most at fault.”

“In what way was he at fault?” asked the Baital curiously.

King Vikram gave him this reply: “The Prince Vajramukut being tempted of
the love-god was insane, and therefore not responsible for his actions.
The minister’s son performed his master’s business obediently, without
considering causes or asking questions--a very excellent quality in a
dependent who is merely required to do as he is bid. With respect to the
young woman, I have only to say that she was a young woman, and thereby
of necessity a possible murderess. But the Raja, a prince, a man of a
certain age and experience, a father of eight! He ought never to have
been deceived by so shallow a trick, nor should he, without reflection,
have banished his daughter from the country.”

“Gramercy to you!” cried the Vampire, bursting into a discordant shout
of laughter, “I now return to my tree. By my tail! I never yet heard a
Raja so readily condemn a Raja.” With these words he slipped out of the
cloth, leaving it to hang empty over the great king’s shoulder.

Vikram stood for a moment, fixed to the spot with blank dismay.
Presently, recovering himself, he retraced his steps, followed by his
son, ascended the sires-tree, tore down the Baital, packed him up as
before, and again set out upon his way.

Soon afterwards a voice sounded behind the warrior king’s back, and
began to tell another true story.




THE VAMPIRE’S SECOND STORY -- Of the Relative Villany of Men and Women.

In the great city of Bhogavati dwelt, once upon a time, a young prince,
concerning whom I may say that he strikingly resembled this amiable son
of your majesty.

Raja Vikram was silent, nor did he acknowledge the Baital’s indirect
compliment. He hated flattery, but he liked, when flattered, to be
flattered in his own person; a feature in their royal patron’s character
which the Nine Gems of Science had turned to their own account.

Now the young prince Raja Ram (continued the tale teller) had an old
father, concerning whom I may say that he was exceedingly unlike your
Rajaship, both as a man and as a parent. He was fond of hunting, dicing,
sleeping by day, drinking at night, and eating perpetual tonics, while
he delighted in the idleness of watching nautch girls, and the vanity of
falling in love. But he was adored by his children because he took the
trouble to win their hearts. He did not lay it down as a law of heaven
that his offspring would assuredly go to Patala if they neglected the
duty of bestowing upon him without cause all their affections, as your
moral, virtuous, and highly respectable fathers are only too apt----.
Aie! Aie!

These sounds issued from the Vampire’s lips as the warrior king,
speechless with wrath, passed his hand behind his back, and viciously
twisted up a piece of the speaker’s skin. This caused the Vampire to
cry aloud, more however, it would appear, in derision than in real
suffering, for he presently proceeded with the same subject.

Fathers, great king, may be divided into three kinds; and be it said
aside, that mothers are the same. Firstly, we have the parent of many
ideas, amusing, pleasant, of course poor, and the idol of his children.
Secondly, there is the parent with one idea and a half. This sort of man
would, in your place, say to himself, “That demon fellow speaks a manner
of truth. I am not above learning from him, despite his position in
life. I will carry out his theory, just to see how far it goes”; and so
saying, he wends his way home, and treats his young ones with prodigious
kindness for a time, but it is not lasting. Thirdly, there is the real
one-idea’d type of parent-yourself, O warrior king Vikram, an admirable
example. You learn in youth what you are taught: for instance, the
blessed precept that the green stick is of the trees of Paradise; and
in age you practice what you have learned. You cannot teach yourselves
anything before your beards sprout, and when they grow stiff you cannot
be taught by others. If any one attempt to change your opinions you cry,

          What is new is not true,
          What is true is not new.

and you rudely pull his hand from the subject. Yet have you your uses
like other things of earth. In life you are good working camels for the
mill-track, and when you die your ashes are not worse compost than those
of the wise.

Your Rajaship will observe (continued the Vampire, as Vikram began
to show symptoms of ungovernable anger) that I have been concise in
treating this digression. Had I not been so, it would have led me far
indeed from my tale. Now to return.

When the old king became air mixed with air, the young king, though he
found hardly ten pieces of silver in the paternal treasury and legacies
for thousands of golden ounces, yet mourned his loss with the deepest
grief. He easily explained to himself the reckless emptiness of the
royal coffers as a proof of his dear kind parent’s goodness, because he
loved him.

But the old man had left behind him, as he could not carry it off with
him, a treasure more valuable than gold and silver: one Churaman, a
parrot, who knew the world, and who besides discoursed in the most
correct Sanscrit. By sage counsel and wise guidance this admirable bird
soon repaired his young master’s shattered fortunes.

One day the prince said, “Parrot, thou knowest everything: tell me
where there is a mate fit for me. The shastras inform us, respecting
the choice of a wife, ‘She who is not descended from his paternal or
maternal ancestors within the sixth degree is eligible by a high
caste man for nuptials. In taking a wife let him studiously avoid the
following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in kine,
goats, sheep, gold, or grain: the family which has omitted prescribed
acts of devotion; that which has produced no male children; that in
which the Veda (scripture) has not been read; that which has thick hair
on the body; and that in which members have been subject to hereditary
disease. Let a person choose for his wife a girl whose person has no
defect; who has an agreeable name; who walks gracefully, like a young
elephant; whose hair and teeth are moderate in quantity and in size; and
whose body is of exquisite softness.’”

“Great king,” responded the parrot Churaman, “there is in the country
of Magadh a Raja, Magadheshwar by name, and he has a daughter called
Chandravati. You will marry her; she is very learned, and, what is
better far, very fait. She is of yellow colour, with a nose like the
flower of the sesamum; her legs are taper, like the plantain-tree; her
eyes are large, like the principal leaf of the lotus; her eye-brows
stretch towards her ears; her lips are red, like the young leaves of the
mango-tree; her face is like the full moon; her voice is like the sound
of the cuckoo; her arms reach to her knees; her throat is like the
pigeon’s; her flanks are thin, like those of the lion; her hair hangs
in curls only down to her waist; her teeth are like the seeds of the
pomegranate; and her gait is that of the drunken elephant or the goose.”

On hearing the parrot’s speech, the king sent for an astrologer, and
asked him, “Whom shall I marry?” The wise man, having consulted his art,
replied, “Chandravati is the name of the maiden, and your marriage with
her will certainly take place.” Thereupon the young Raja, though he had
never seen his future queen, became incontinently enamoured of her. He
summoned a Brahman, and sent him to King Magadheshwar, saying, “If you
arrange satisfactorily this affair of our marriage we will reward you
amply”--a promise which lent wings to the priest.

Now it so happened that this talented and beautiful princess had
a jay,[74] whose name was Madan-manjari or Love-garland. She also
possessed encyclopaedic knowledge after her degree, and, like the
parrot, she spoke excellent Sanscrit.

Be it briefly said, O warrior king-for you think that I am talking
fables--that in the days of old, men had the art of making birds
discourse in human language. The invention is attributed to a great
philosopher, who split their tongues, and after many generations
produced a selected race born with those members split. He altered the
shapes of their skulls by fixing ligatures behind the occiput, which
caused the sinciput to protrude, their eyes to become prominent, and
their brains to master the art of expressing thoughts in words.

But this wonderful discovery, like those of great philosophers
generally, had in it a terrible practical flaw The birds beginning to
speak, spoke wisely and so well, they told the truth so persistently,
they rebuked their brethren of the featherless skins so openly, they
flattered them so little and they counselled them so much, that mankind
presently grew tired of hearing them discourse. Thus the art gradually
fell into desuetude, and now it is numbered with the things that were.

One day the charming Princess Chandravati was sitting in confidential
conversation with her jay. The dialogue was not remarkable, for maidens
in all ages seldom consult their confidantes or speculate upon the
secrets of futurity, or ask to have dreams interpreted, except upon one
subject. At last the princess said, for perhaps the hundredth time that
month, “Where, O jay, is there a husband worthy of me?”

“Princess,” replied Madan-manjari, “I am happy at length to be able
as willing to satisfy your just curiosity. For just it is, though the
delicacy of our sex--”

“Now, no preaching!” said the maiden; “or thou shalt have salt instead
of sugar for supper.”

Jays, your Rajaship, are fond of sugar. So the confidante retained a
quantity of good advice which she was about to produce, and replied,

“I now see clearly the ways of Fortune. Raja Ram, king of Bhogavati, is
to be thy husband. He shall be happy in thee and thou in him, for he is
young and handsome, rich and generous, good-tempered, not too clever,
and without a chance of being an invalid.”

Thereupon the princess, although she had never seen her future husband,
at once began to love him. In fact, though neither had set eyes upon the
other, both were mutually in love.

“How can that be, sire?” asked the young Dharma Dhwaj of his father. “I
always thought that--”

The great Vikram interrupted his son, and bade him not to ask silly
questions. Thus he expected to neutralize the evil effects of the
Baital’s doctrine touching the amiability of parents unlike himself.

Now, as both these young people (resumed the Baital) were of princely
family and well to do in the world, the course of their love was
unusually smooth. When the Brahman sent by Raja Ram had reached Magadh,
and had delivered his King’s homage to the Raja Magadheshwar, the latter
received him with distinction, and agreed to his proposal. The beautiful
princess’s father sent for a Brahman of his own, and charging him with
nuptial gifts and the customary presents, sent him back to Bhogavati in
company with the other envoy, and gave him this order, “Greet Raja Ram,
on my behalf, and after placing the tilak or mark upon his forehead,
return here with all speed. When you come back I will get all things
ready for the marriage.”

Raja Ram, on receiving the deputation, was greatly pleased, and
after generously rewarding the Brahmans and making all the necessary
preparations, he set out in state for the land of Magadha, to claim his
betrothed.

In due season the ceremony took place with feasting and bands of
music, fireworks and illuminations, rehearsals of scripture, songs,
entertainments, processions, and abundant noise. And hardly had the
turmeric disappeared from the beautiful hands and feet of the bride,
when the bridegroom took an affectionate leave of his new parents--he
had not lived long in the house--and receiving the dowry and the bridal
gifts, set out for his own country.

Chandravati was dejected by leaving her mother, and therefore she
was allowed to carry with her the jay, Madanmanian. She soon told her
husband the wonderful way in which she had first heard his name, and
he related to her the advantage which he had derived from confabulation
with Churaman, his parrot.

“Then why do we not put these precious creatures into one cage,
after marrying them according to the rites of the angelic marriage
(Gandharva-lagana)?” said the charming queen. Like most brides, she was
highly pleased to find an opportunity of making a match.

“Ay! why not, love? Surely they cannot live happy in what the world
calls single blessedness,” replied the young king. As bridegrooms
sometimes are for a short time, he was very warm upon the subject of
matrimony.

Thereupon, without consulting the parties chiefly concerned in their
scheme, the master and mistress, after being comfortably settled at the
end of their journey, caused a large cage to be brought, and put into it
both their favourites.

Upon which Churaman the parrot leaned his head on one side and directed
a peculiar look at the jay. But Madan-manjari raised her beak high in
the air, puffed through it once or twice, and turned away her face in
extreme disdain.

“Perhaps,” quoth the parrot, at length breaking silence, “you will tell
me that you have no desire to be married?”

“Probably,” replied the jay.

“And why?” asked the male bird.

“Because I don’t choose,” replied the female.

“Truly a feminine form of resolution this,” ejaculated the parrot. “I
will borrow my master’s words and call it a woman’s reason, that is to
say, no reason at all. Have you any objection to be more explicit?”

“None whatever,” retorted the jay, provoked by the rude innuendo into
telling more plainly than politely exactly what she thought; “none
whatever, sir parrot. You he-things are all of you sinful, treacherous,
deceitful, selfish, devoid of conscience, and accustomed to sacrifice
us, the weaker sex, to your smallest desire or convenience.”

“Of a truth, fair lady,” quoth the young Raja Ram to his bride, “this
pet of thine is sufficiently impudent.”

“Let her words be as wind in thine ear, master,” interrupted the parrot.
“And pray, Mistress Jay, what are you she-things but treacherous, false,
ignorant, and avaricious beings, whose only wish in this world is to
prevent life being as pleasant as it might be?”

“Verily, my love,” said the beautiful Chandravati to her bridegroom,
“this thy bird has a habit of expressing his opinions in a very free and
easy way.”

“I can prove what I assert,” whispered the jay in the ear of the
princess.

“We can confound their feminine minds by an anecdote,” whispered the
parrot in the ear of the prince.

Briefly, King Vikram, it was settled between the twain that each should
establish the truth of what it had advanced by an illustration in the
form of a story.

Chandravati claimed, and soon obtained, precedence for the jay. Then the
wonderful bird, Madan-manjari, began to speak as follows:--

I have often told thee, O queen, that before coming to thy feet, my
mistress was Ratnawati, the daughter of a rich trader, the dearest, the
sweetest, the----

Here the jay burst into tears, and the mistress was sympathetically
affected. Presently the speaker resumed----

However, I anticipate. In the city of Ilapur there was a wealthy
merchant, who was without offspring; on this account he was continually
fasting and going on pilgrimage, and when at home he was ever engaged in
reading the Puranas and in giving alms to the Brahmans.

At length, by favour of the Deity, a son was born to this merchant, who
celebrated his birth with great pomp and rejoicing, and gave large gifts
to Brahmans and to bards, and distributed largely to the hungry, the
thirsty, and the poor. When the boy was five years old he had him taught
to read, and when older he was sent to a guru, who had formerly himself
been a student, and who was celebrated as teacher and lecturer.

In the course of time the merchant’s son grew up. Praise be to Brahma!
what a wonderful youth it was, with a face like a monkey’s, legs like a
stork’s, and a back like a camel’s. You know the old proverb:--

          Expect thirty-two villanies from the limping, and eighty
from the one-eyed man,
          But when the hunchback comes, say “Lord defend us!”

Instead of going to study, he went to gamble with other ne’er-do-weels,
to whom he talked loosely, and whom he taught to be bad-hearted as
himself. He made love to every woman, and despite his ugliness, he was
not unsuccessful. For they are equally fortunate who are very handsome
or very ugly, in so far as they are both remarkable and remarked. But
the latter bear away the palm. Beautiful men begin well with women, who
do all they can to attract them, love them as the apples of their eyes,
discover them to be fools, hold them to be their equals, deceive them,
and speedily despise them. It is otherwise with the ugly man, who, in
consequence of his homeliness, must work his wits and take pains with
himself, and become as pleasing as he is capable of being, till women
forget his ape’s face, bird’s legs, and bunchy back.

The hunchback, moreover, became a Tantri, so as to complete his
villanies. He was duly initiated by an apostate Brahman, made a
declaration that he renounced all the ceremonies of his old religion,
and was delivered from their yoke, and proceeded to perform in token
of joy an abominable rite. In company with eight men and eight women-a
Brahman female, a dancing girl, a weaver’s daughter, a woman of ill
fame, a washerwoman, a barber’s wife, a milkmaid, and the daughter of a
land-owner--choosing the darkest time of night and the most secret part
of the house, he drank with them, was sprinkled and anointed, and went
through many ignoble ceremonies, such as sitting nude upon a dead body.
The teacher informed him that he was not to indulge shame, or aversion
to anything, nor to prefer one thing to another, nor to regard caste,
ceremonial cleanness or uncleanness, but freely to enjoy all the
pleasures of sense-that is, of course, wine and us, since we are the
representatives of the wife of Cupid, and wine prevents the senses from
going astray. And whereas holy men, holding that the subjugation or
annihilation of the passions is essential to final beatitude, accomplish
this object by bodily austerities, and by avoiding temptation, he
proceeded to blunt the edge of the passions with excessive indulgence.
And he jeered at the pious, reminding them that their ascetics are safe
only in forests, and while keeping a perpetual fast; but that he could
subdue his passions in the very presence of what they most desired.

Presently this excellent youth’s father died, leaving him immense
wealth. He blunted his passions so piously and so vigorously, that in
very few years his fortune was dissipated. Then he turned towards
his neighbour’s goods and prospered for a time, till being discovered
robbing, he narrowly escaped the stake. At length he exclaimed, “Let the
gods perish! the rascals send me nothing but ill luck!” and so saying he
arose and fled from his own country.

Chance led that villain hunchback to the city of Chandrapur, where,
hearing the name of my master Hemgupt, he recollected that one of his
father’s wealthiest correspondents was so called. Thereupon, with
his usual audacity, he presented himself at the house, walked in,
and although he was clothed in tatters, introduced himself, told his
father’s name and circumstances, and wept bitterly.

The good man was much astonished, and not less grieved, to see the son
of his old friend in such woful plight. He rose up, however, embraced
the youth, and asked the reason of his coming.

“I freighted a vessel,” said the false hunchback, “for the purpose
of trading to a certain land. Having gone there, I disposed of my
merchandise, and, taking another cargo, I was on my voyage home.
Suddenly a great storm arose, and the vessel was wrecked, and I escaped
on a plank, and after a time arrived here. But I am ashamed, since I
have lost all my wealth, and I cannot show my face in this plight in my
own city. My excellent father would have consoled me with his pity. But
now that I have carried him and my mother to Ganges,[75] every one will
turn against me; they will rejoice in my misfortunes, they will accuse
me of folly and recklessness--alas! alas! I am truly miserable.”

My dear master was deceived by the cunning of the wretch. He offered him
hospitality, which was readily enough accepted, and he entertained him
for some time as a guest. Then, having reason to be satisfied with his
conduct, Hemgupt admitted him to his secrets, and finally made him a
partner in his business. Briefly, the villain played his cards so well,
that at last the merchant said to himself:

“I have had for years an anxiety and a calamity in my house. My
neighbours whisper things to my disadvantage, and those who are bolder
speak out with astonishment amongst themselves, saying, ‘At seven or
eight, people marry their daughters, and this indeed is the appointment
of the law: that period is long since gone; she is now thirteen or
fourteen years old, and she is very tall and lusty, resembling a married
woman of thirty. How can her father eat his rice with comfort and sleep
with satisfaction, whilst such a disreputable thing exists in his
house? At present he is exposed to shame, and his deceased friends are
suffering through his retaining a girl from marriage beyond the period
which nature has prescribed.’ And now, while I am sitting quietly at
home, the Bhagwan (Deity) removes all my uneasiness: by his favour such
an opportunity occurs. It is not right to delay. It is best that I shall
give my daughter in marriage to him. Whatever can be done to-day is
best; who knows what may happen to-morrow?”

Thus thinking, the old man went to his wife and said to her, “Birth,
marriage, and death are all under the direction of the gods; can anyone
say when they will be ours? We want for our daughter a young man who is
of good birth, rich and handsome, clever and honourable. But we do not
find him. If the bridegroom be faulty, thou sayest, all will go wrong.
I cannot put a string round the neck of our daughter and throw her into
the ditch. If, however, thou think well of the merchant’s son, now my
partner, we will celebrate Ratnawati’s marriage with him.”

The wife, who had been won over by the hunchback’s hypocrisy, was also
pleased, and replied, “My lord! when the Deity so plainly indicates his
wish, we should do it; since, though we have sat quietly at home, the
desire of our hearts is accomplished. It is best that no delay be made:
and, having quickly summoned the family priest, and having fixed upon a
propitious planetary conjunction, that the marriage be celebrated.”

Then they called their daughter--ah, me! what a beautiful being she was,
and worthy the love of a Gandharva (demigod). Her long hair, purple with
the light of youth, was glossy as the bramra’s[76] wing; her brow was
pure and clear as the agate; the ocean-coral looked pale beside her
lips, and her teeth were as two chaplets of pearls. Everything in her
was formed to be loved. Who could look into her eyes without wishing
to do it again? Who could hear her voice without hoping that such music
would sound once more? And she was good as she was fair. Her father
adored her; her mother, though a middle-aged woman, was not envious or
jealous of her; her relatives doted on her, and her friends could
find no fault with her. I should never end were I to tell her precious
qualities. Alas, alas! my poor Ratnawati!

So saying, the jay wept abundant tears; then she resumed:

When her parents informed my mistress of their resolution, she replied,
“Sadhu-it is well!” She was not like most young women, who hate nothing
so much as a man whom their seniors order them to love. She bowed
her head and promised obedience, although, as she afterwards told
her mother, she could hardly look at her intended, on account of his
prodigious ugliness. But presently the hunchback’s wit surmounted her
disgust. She was grateful to him for his attention to her father and
mother; she esteemed him for his moral and religious conduct; she pitied
him for his misfortunes, and she finished with forgetting his face,
legs, and back in her admiration of what she supposed to be his mind.

She had vowed before marriage faithfully to perform all the duties of a
wife, however distasteful to her they might be; but after the nuptials,
which were not long deferred, she was not surprised to find that she
loved her husband. Not only did she omit to think of his features
and figure; I verily believe that she loved him the more for his
repulsiveness. Ugly, very ugly men prevail over women for two reasons.
Firstly, we begin with repugnance, which in the course of nature turns
to affection; and we all like the most that which, when unaccustomed to
it, we most disliked. Hence the poet says, with as much truth as is in
the male:

          Never despair, O man! when woman’s spite
          Detests thy name and sickens at thy sight:
          Sometime her heart shall learn to love thee more
          For the wild hatred which it felt before, &c.

Secondly, the very ugly man appears, deceitfully enough, to think little
of his appearance, and he will give himself the trouble to pursue
a heart because he knows that the heart will not follow after him.
Moreover, we women (said the jay) are by nature pitiful, and this our
enemies term a “strange perversity.” A widow is generally disconsolate
if she loses a little, wizen-faced, shrunken shanked, ugly, spiteful,
distempered thing that scolded her and quarrelled with her, and beat her
and made her hours bitter; whereas she will follow her husband to Ganges
with exemplary fortitude if he was brave, handsome, generous----

“Either hold your tongue or go on with your story,” cried the warrior
king, in whose mind these remarks awakened disagreeable family
reflections.

“Hi! hi! hi!” laughed the demon; “I will obey your majesty, and make
Madan-manjari, the misanthropical jay, proceed.”

Yes, she loved the hunchback; and how wonderful is our love! quoth the
jay. A light from heaven which rains happiness on this dull, dark earth!
A spell falling upon the spirit, which reminds us of a higher existence!
A memory of bliss! A present delight! An earnest of future felicity!
It makes hideousness beautiful and stupidity clever, old age young and
wickedness good, moroseness amiable, and low-mindedness magnanimous,
perversity pretty and vulgarity piquant. Truly it is sovereign alchemy
and excellent flux for blending contradictions is our love, exclaimed
the jay.

And so saying, she cast a triumphant look at the parrot, who only
remarked that he could have desired a little more originality in her
remarks.

For some months (resumed Madan-manjari), the bride and the bridegroom
lived happily together in Hemgupt’s house. But it is said:

          Never yet did the tiger become a lamb;

and the hunchback felt that the edge of his passions again wanted
blunting. He reflected, “Wisdom is exemption from attachment, and
affection for children, wife, and home.” Then he thus addressed my poor
young mistress:

“I have been now in thy country some years, and I have heard no tidings
of my own family, hence my mind is sad, I have told thee everything
about myself; thou must now ask thy mother leave for me to go to my own
city, and, if thou wishest, thou mayest go with me.”

Ratnawati lost no time in saying to her mother, “My husband wishes to
visit his own country; will you so arrange that he may not be pained
about this matter?”

The mother went to her husband, and said, “Your son-in-law desires leave
to go to his own country.”

Hemgupt replied, “Very well; we will grant him leave. One has no power
over another man’s son. We will do what he wishes.”

The parents then called their daughter, and asked her to tell them her
real desire-whether she would go to her father-in-law’s house, or would
remain in her mother’s home. She was abashed at this question, and could
not answer; but she went back to her husband, and said, “As my father
and mother have declared that you should do as you like, do not leave me
behind.”

Presently the merchant summoned his son-in-law, and having bestowed
great wealth upon him, allowed him to depart. He also bade his daughter
farewell, after giving her a palanquin and a female slave. And the
parents took leave of them with wailing and bitter tears; their hearts
were like to break. And so was mine.

For some days the hunchback travelled quietly along with his wife, in
deep thought. He could not take her to his city, where she would find
out his evil life, and the fraud which he had passed upon her father.
Besides which, although he wanted her money, he by no means wanted her
company for life. After turning on many projects in his evil-begotten
mind, he hit upon the following:

He dismissed the palanquin-bearers when halting at a little shed in the
thick jungle through which they were travelling, and said to his wife,
“This is a place of danger; give me thy jewels, and I will hide them in
my waist-shawl. When thou reachest the city thou canst wear them again.”
 She then gave up to him all her ornaments, which were of great value.
Thereupon he inveigled the slave girl into the depths of the forest,
where he murdered her, and left her body to be devoured by wild beasts.
Lastly, returning to my poor mistress, he induced her to leave the hut
with him, and pushed her by force into a dry well, after which exploit
he set out alone with his ill-gotten wealth, walking towards his own
city.

In the meantime, a wayfaring man, who was passing through that jungle,
hearing the sound of weeping, stood still, and began to say to himself,
“How came to my ears the voice of a mortal’s grief in this wild wood?”
 then followed the direction of the noise, which led him a pit, and
peeping over the side, he saw a woman crying at the bottom. The
traveller at once loosened his gird cloth, knotted it to his turband,
and letting down the line pulled out the poor bride. He asked her who
she was and how she came to fall into that well. She replied, “I am the
daughter of Hemgupt, the wealthiest merchant in the city of Chandrapur;
and I was journeying with my husband to his own country, when robbers
set upon us and surrounded us. They slew my slave girl, the threw me
into a well, and having bound my husband they took him away, together
with my jewels. I have no tidings of him, nor he of me.” And so saying,
she burst into tears and lamentations.

The wayfaring man believed her tale, and conducted her to her home,
where she gave the same account of the accident which had befallen her,
ending with, “beyond this, I know not if they have killed my husband, or
have let him go.” The father thus soothed her grief “Daughter! have no
anxiety; thy husband is alive, and by the will of the Deity he will come
to thee in a few days. Thieves take men’s money, not their lives.” Then
the parents presented her with ornaments more precious than those which
she had lost; and summoning their relations and friends, they comforted
her to the best of their power.

And so did I. The wicked hunchback had, meanwhile, returned to his own
city, where he was excellently well received, because he brought much
wealth with him. His old associates flocked around him rejoicing; and he
fell into the same courses which had beggared him before. Gambling and
debauchery soon blunted his passions, and emptied his purse. Again his
boon companions, finding him without a broken cowrie, drove him from
their doors, he stole and was flogged for theft; and lastly, half
famished, he fled the city. Then he said to himself, “I must go to my
father-in-law, and make the excuse that a grandson has been born to him,
and that I have come to offer him congratulations on the event.”

Imagine, however, his fears and astonishment, when, as he entered the
house, his wife stood before him. At first he thought it was a ghost,
and turned to run away, but she went out to him and said, “Husband,
be not troubled! I have told my father that thieves came upon us, and
killed the slave girl and robbed me and threw me into a well, and bound
thee and carried thee off. Tell the same story, and put away all anxious
feelings. Come up and change thy tattered garments-alas! some misfortune
hath befallen thee. But console thyself; all is now well, since thou
art returned to me, and fear not, for the house is thine, and I am thy
slave.”

The wretch, with all his hardness of heart, could scarcely refrain from
tears. He followed his wife to her room, where she washed his feet,
caused him to bathe, dressed him in new clothes, and placed food before
him. When her parents returned, she presented him to their embrace,
saying in a glad way, “Rejoice with me, O my father and mother! the
robbers have at length allowed him to come back to us.” Of course the
parents were deceived, they are mostly a purblind race; and Hemgupt,
showing great favour to his worthless son-in-law, exclaimed, “Remain
with us, my son, and be happy!”

For two or three months the hunchback lived quietly with his wife,
treating her kindly and even affectionately. But this did not last long.
He made acquaintance with a band of thieves, and arranged his plans with
them.

After a time, his wife one night came to sleep by his side, having put
on all her jewels. At midnight, when he saw that she was fast asleep,
he struck her with a knife so that she died. Then he admitted his
accomplices, who savagely murdered Hemgupt and his wife; and with their
assistance he carried off any valuable article upon which he could lay
his hands. The ferocious wretch! As he passed my cage he looked at it,
and thought whether he had time to wring my neck. The barking of a dog
saved my life; but my mistress, my poor Ratnawati-ah, me! ah, me!--

“Queen,” said the jay, in deepest grief, “all this have I seen with mine
own eyes, and have heard with mine own ears. It affected me in early
life, and gave me a dislike for the society of the other sex. With due
respect to you, I have resolved to remain an old maid. Let your majesty
reflect, what crime had my poor mistress committed? A male is of the
same disposition as a highway robber; and she who forms friendship with
such an one, cradles upon her bosom a black and venomous snake.”

“Sir Parrot,” said the jay, turning to her wooer, “I have spoken. I
have nothing more to say, but that you he-things are all a treacherous,
selfish, wicked race, created for the express purpose of working our
worldly woe, and--”

“When a female, O my king, asserts that she has nothing more to say,
but,” broke in Churaman, the parrot with a loud dogmatical voice, “I
know that what she has said merely whets her tongue for what she is
about to say. This person has surely spoken long enough and drearily
enough.”

“Tell me, then, O parrot,” said the king, “what faults there may be in
the other sex.”

“I will relate,” quoth Churaman, “an occurrence which in my early youth
determined me to live and to die an old bachelor.”

When quite a young bird, and before my schooling began, I was caught
in the land of Malaya, and was sold to a very rich merchant called
Sagardati, a widower with one daughter, the lady Jayashri. As her father
spent all his days and half his nights in his counting-house, conning
his ledgers and scolding his writers, that young woman had more liberty
than is generally allowed to those of her age, and a mighty bad use she
made of it.

O king! men commit two capital mistakes in rearing the “domestic
calamity,” and these are over-vigilance and under-vigilance. Some
parents never lose sight of their daughters, suspect them of all evil
intentions, and are silly enough to show their suspicions, which is an
incentive to evil-doing. For the weak-minded things do naturally say,
“I will be wicked at once. What do I now but suffer all the pains and
penalties of badness, without enjoying its pleasures?” And so they are
guilty of many evil actions; for, however vigilant fathers and mothers
may be, the daughter can always blind their eyes.

On the other hand, many parents take no trouble whatever with their
charges: they allow them to sit in idleness, the origin of badness; they
permit them to communicate with the wicked, and they give them liberty
which breeds opportunity. Thus they also, falling into the snares of the
unrighteous, who are ever a more painstaking race than the righteous,
are guilty of many evil actions.

What, then, must wise parents do? The wise will study the characters of
their children, and modify their treatment accordingly. If a daughter be
naturally good, she will be treated with a prudent confidence. If she
be vicious, an apparent trust will be reposed in her; but her father and
mother will secretly ever be upon their guard. The one-idea’d--

“All this parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me,” cried
the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very naturally, a
person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in the thoughts and
minds of others. “If thou must tell a tale, then tell one, Vampire! or
else be silent, as I am sick to the death of thy psychics.”

“It is well, O warrior king,” resumed the Baital.

After that Churaman the parrot had given the young Raja Ram a golden
mine full of good advice about the management of daughters, he proceeded
to describe Jayashri.

She was tall, stout, and well made, of lymphatic temperament, and yet
strong passions. Her fine large eyes had heavy and rather full eyelids,
which are to be avoided. Her hands were symmetrical without being small,
and the palms were ever warm and damp. Though her lips were good, her
mouth was somewhat underhung; and her voice was so deep, that at times
it sounded like that of a man. Her hair was smooth as the kokila’s
plume, and her complexion was that of the young jasmine; and these were
the points at which most persons looked. Altogether, she was neither
handsome nor ugly, which is an excellent thing in woman. Sita the
goddess[77] was lovely to excess; therefore she was carried away by a
demon. Raja Bali was exceedingly generous, and he emptied his treasury.
In this way, exaggeration, even of good, is exceedingly bad.

Yet must I confess, continued the parrot, that, as a rule, the beautiful
woman is more virtuous than the ugly. The former is often tempted, but
her vanity and conceit enable her to resist, by the self-promise that
she shall be tempted again and again. On the other hand, the ugly woman
must tempt instead of being tempted, and she must yield, because her
vanity and conceit are gratified by yielding, not by resisting.

“Ho, there!” broke in the jay contemptuously. “What woman cannot win the
hearts of the silly things called men? Is it not said that a pig-faced
female who dwells in Landanpur has a lover?”

I was about to remark, my king! said the parrot, somewhat nettled, if
the aged virgin had not interrupted me, that as ugly women are more
vicious than handsome women, so they are most successful. “We love the
pretty, we adore the plain,” is a true saying amongst the worldly
wise. And why do we adore the plain? Because they seem to think less of
themselves than of us-a vital condition of adoration.

Jayashri made some conquests by the portion of good looks which she
possessed, more by her impudence, and most by her father’s reputation
for riches. She was truly shameless, and never allowed herself fewer
than half a dozen admirers at the time. Her chief amusement was to
appoint interviews with them successively, at intervals so short that
she was obliged to hurry away one in order to make room for another. And
when a lover happened to be jealous, or ventured in any way to criticize
her arrangements, she replied at once by showing him the door. Answer
unanswerable!

When Jayashri had reached the ripe age of thirteen, the son of a
merchant, who was her father’s gossip and neighbour, returned home after
a long sojourn in far lands, whither he had travelled in the search of
wealth. The poor wretch, whose name, by-the-bye, was Shridat (Gift of
Fortune), had loved her in her childhood; and he came back, as men
are apt to do after absence from familiar scenes, painfully full of
affection for house and home and all belonging to it. From his cross,
stingy old uncle to the snarling superannuated beast of a watchdog, he
viewed all with eyes of love and melting heart. He could not see that
his idol was greatly changed, and nowise for the better; that her nose
was broader and more club-like, her eyelids fatter and thicker, her
under lip more prominent, her voice harsher, and her manner coarser. He
did not notice that she was an adept in judging of men’s dress, and that
she looked with admiration upon all swordsmen, especially upon those
who fought upon horses and elephants. The charm of memory, the
curious faculty of making past time present caused all he viewed to be
enchanting to him.

Having obtained her father’s permission, Shridat applied for betrothal
to Jayashri, who with peculiar boldness, had resolved that no suitor
should come to her through her parent. And she, after leading him on by
all the coquetries of which she was a mistress, refused to marry him,
saying that she liked him as a friend, but would hate him as a husband.

You see, my king! there are three several states of feeling with which
women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and indifference.
Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient, because the
essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as readily as
they fall into it. Hate being a sister excitement will easily become,
if a man has wit enough to effect the change, love; and hate-love
may perhaps last a little longer than love-love. Also, man has the
occupation, the excitement, and the pleasure of bringing about the
change. As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his
ideas who sang--

               Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn,
               Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!

For a man versed in the Lila Shastra[78] can soon turn a woman’s
indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to
love. In which predicament it is the old thing over again, and it ends
in the pure Asat[79] or nonentity.

“Which of these two birds, the jay or the parrot, had dipped deeper into
human nature, mighty King Vikram?” asked the demon in a wheedling tone
of voice.

The trap was this time set too openly, even for the royal personage,
to fall into it. He hurried on, calling to his son, and not answering a
word. The Vampire therefore resumed the thread of his story at the place
where he had broken it off.

Shridat was in despair when he heard the resolve of his idol. He thought
of drowning himself, of throwing himself down from the summit of Mount
Girnar,[80] of becoming a religious beggar; in short, of a multitude
of follies. But he refrained from all such heroic remedies for despair,
having rightly judged, when he became somewhat calmer, that they would
not be likely to further his suit. He discovered that patience is
a virtue, and he resolved impatiently enough to practice it. And by
perseverance he succeeded. The worse for him! How vain are men to wish!
How wise is the Deity, who is deaf to their wishes!

Jayashri, for potent reasons best known to herself, was married to
Shridat six months after his return home. He was in raptures. He called
himself the happiest man in existence. He thanked and sacrificed to the
Bhagwan for listening to his prayers. He recalled to mind with thrilling
heart the long years which he had spent in hopeless exile from all that
was dear to him, his sadness and anxiety, his hopes and joys, his toils
and troubles his loyal love and his vows to Heaven for the happiness of
his idol, and for the furtherance of his fondest desires.

For truly he loved her, continued the parrot, and there is something
holy in such love. It becomes not only a faith, but the best of
faiths-an abnegation of self which emancipates the spirit from its
straightest and earthliest bondage, the “I”; the first step in the
regions of heaven; a homage rendered through the creature to the
Creator; a devotion solid, practical, ardent, not as worship mostly is,
a cold and lifeless abstraction; a merging of human nature into one far
nobler and higher the spiritual existence of the supernal world. For
perfect love is perfect happiness, and the only perfection of man; and
what is a demon but a being without love? And what makes man’s love
truly divine, is the fact that it is bestowed upon such a thing as
woman.

“And now, Raja Vikram,” said the Vampire, speaking in his proper person,
“I have given you Madanmanjari the jay’s and Churaman the parrot’s
definitions of the tender passion, or rather their descriptions of its
effects. Kindly observe that I am far from accepting either one or the
other. Love is, according to me, somewhat akin to mania, a temporary
condition of selfishness, a transient confusion of identity. It enables
man to predicate of others who are his other selves, that which he is
ashamed to say about his real self. I will suppose the beloved object to
be ugly, stupid, vicious, perverse, selfish, low minded, or the reverse;
man finds it charming by the same rule that makes his faults and foibles
dearer to him than all the virtues and good qualities of his neighbours.
Ye call love a spell, an alchemy, a deity. Why? Because it deifies self
by gratifying all man’s pride, man’s vanity, and man’s conceit, under
the mask of complete unegotism. Who is not in heaven when he is talking
of himself? and, prithee, of what else consists all the talk of lovers?”

It is astonishing that the warrior king allowed this speech to last
as long as it did. He hated nothing so fiercely, now that he was in
middle-age, as any long mention of the “handsome god.[81]” Having vainly
endeavoured to stop by angry mutterings the course of the Baital’s
eloquence, he stepped out so vigorously and so rudely shook that
inveterate talker, that the latter once or twice nearly bit off the tip
of his tongue. Then the Vampire became silent, and Vikram relapsed into
a walk which allowed the tale to be resumed.

Jayashri immediately conceived a strong dislike for her husband, and
simultaneously a fierce affection for a reprobate who before had been
indifferent to her. The more lovingly Shridat behaved to her, the more
vexed end annoyed she was. When her friends talked to her, she turned up
her nose, raising her eyebrows (in token of displeasure), and remained
silent. When her husband spoke words of affection to her, she found them
disagreeable, and turning away her face, reclined on the bed. Then he
brought dresses and ornaments of various kinds and presented them to
her, saying, “Wear these.” Whereupon she would become more angry,
knit her brows, turn her face away, and in an audible whisper call him
“fool.” All day she stayed out of the house, saying to her companions,
“Sisters, my youth is passing away, and I have not, up to the present
time, tasted any of this world’s pleasures.” Then she would ascend to
the balcony, peep through the lattice, and seeing the reprobate going
along, she would cry to her friend, “Bring that person to me.” All night
she tossed and turned from side to side, reflecting in her heart, “I
am puzzled in my mind what I shall say, and whither I shall go. I have
forgotten sleep, hunger, and thirst; neither heat nor cold is refreshing
to me.”

At last, unable any longer to support the separation from her reprobate
paramour, whom she adored, she resolved to fly with him. On one
occasion, when she thought that her husband was fast asleep, she rose up
quietly, and leaving him, made her way fearlessly in the dark night
to her lover’s abode. A footpad, who saw her on the way, thought to
himself, “Where can this woman, clothed in jewels, be going alone at
midnight?” And thus he followed her unseen, and watched her.

When Jayashri reached the intended place, she went into the house, and
found her lover lying at the door. He was dead, having been stabbed by
the footpad; but she, thinking that he had, according to custom, drunk
intoxicating hemp, sat upon the floor, and raising his head, placed it
tenderly in her lap. Then, burning with the fire of separation from
him, she began to kiss his cheeks, and to fondle and caress him with the
utmost freedom and affection.

By chance a Pisach (evil spirit) was seated in a large fig-tree[82]
opposite the house, and it occurred to him, when beholding this scene,
that he might amuse himself in a characteristic way. He therefore hopped
down from his branch, vivified the body, and began to return the woman’s
caresses. But as Jayashri bent down to kiss his lips, he caught the end
of her nose in his teeth, and bit it clean off. He then issued from the
corpse, and returned to the branch where he had been sitting.

Jayashri was in despair. She did not, however, lose her presence of
mind, but sat down and proceeded to take thought; and when she had
matured her plan she arose, dripping with blood, and walked straight
home to her husband’s house. On entering his room she clapped her hand
to her nose, and began to gnash her teeth, and to shriek so violently,
that all the members of the family were alarmed. The neighbours also
collected in numbers at the door, and, as it was bolted inside, they
broke it open and rushed in, carrying lights. There they saw the
wife sitting upon the ground with her face mutilated, and the husband
standing over her, apparently trying to appease her.

“O ignorant, criminal, shameless, pitiless wretch!” cried the people,
especially the women; “why hast thou cut off her nose, she not having
offended in any way?”

Poor Shridat, seeing at once the trick which had been played upon him,
thought to himself: “One should put no confidence in a changeful mind, a
black serpent, or an armed enemy, and one should dread a woman’s doings.
What cannot a poet describe? What is there that a saint (jogi) does not
know? What nonsense will not a drunken man talk? What limit is there to
a woman’s guile? True it is that the gods know nothing of the defects of
a horse, of the thundering of clouds, of a woman’s deeds, or of a man’s
future fortunes. How then can we know?” He could do nothing but weep,
and swear by the herb basil, by his cattle, by his grain, by a piece of
gold, and by all that is holy, that he had not committed the crime.

In the meanwhile, the old merchant, Jayashri’s father, ran off, and laid
a complaint before the kotwal, and the footmen of the police magistrate
were immediately sent to apprehend the husband, and to carry him bound
before the judge. The latter, after due examination, laid the affair
before the king. An example happening to be necessary at the time, the
king resolved to punish the offence with severity, and he summoned the
husband and wife to the court.

When the merchant’s daughter was asked to give an account of what had
happened, she pointed out the state of her nose, and said, “Maharaj! why
inquire of me concerning what is so manifest?” The king then turned to
the husband, and bade him state his defence. He said, “I know nothing of
it,” and in the face of the strongest evidence he persisted in denying
his guilt.

Thereupon the king, who had vainly threatened to cut off Shridat’s
right hand, infuriated by his refusing to confess and to beg for
mercy, exclaimed, “How must I punish such a wretch as thou art?” The
unfortunate man answered, “Whatever your majesty may consider just, that
be pleased to do.” Thereupon the king cried, “Away with him, and impale
him”; and the people, hearing the command, prepared to obey it.

Before Shridat had left the court, the footpad, who had been looking
on, and who saw that an innocent man was about to be unjustly punished,
raised a cry for justice and, pushing through the crowd, resolved to
make himself heard. He thus addressed the throne: “Great king, the
cherishing of the good, and the punishment of the bad, is the invariable
duty of kings.” The ruler having caused him to approach, asked him who
he was, and he replied boldly, “Maharaj! I am a thief, and this man is
innocent and his blood is about to be shed unjustly. Your majesty has
not done what is right in this affair.” Thereupon the king charged
him to tell the truth according to his religion; and the thief related
explicitly the whole circumstances, omitting of course, the murder.

“Go ye,” said the king to his messengers, “and look in the mouth of the
woman’s lover who has fallen dead. If the nose be there found, then has
this thief-witness told the truth, and the husband is a guiltless man.”

The nose was presently produced in court, and Shridat escaped the stake.
The king caused the wicked Jayashri’s face to be smeared with oily soot,
and her head and eyebrows to be shaved; thus blackened and disfigured,
she was mounted upon a little ragged-limbed ass and was led around the
market and the streets, after which she was banished for ever from the
city. The husband and the thief were then dismissed with betel and other
gifts, together with much sage advice which neither of them wanted.

“My king,” resumed the misogyne parrot, “of such excellencies as these
are women composed. It is said that ‘wet cloth will extinguish fire and
bad food will destroy strength; a degenerate son ruins a family,
and when a friend is in wrath he takes away life. But a woman is an
inflicter of grief in love and in hate, whatever she does turns out to
be for our ill. Truly the Deity has created woman a strange being in
this world.’ And again, ‘The beauty of the nightingale is its song,
science is the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness is the beauty of a
devotee, and the beauty of a woman is virtue-but where shall we find
it?’ And again, ‘Among the sages, Narudu; among the beasts, the jackal;
among the birds, the crow; among men, the barber; and in this world
woman-is the most crafty.’

“What I have told thee, my king, I have seen with mine own eyes, and I
have heard with mine own ears. At the time I was young, but the event
so affected me that I have ever since held female kind to be a walking
pest, a two-legged plague, whose mission on earth, like flies and other
vermin, is only to prevent our being too happy. O, why do not children
and young parrots sprout in crops from the ground-from budding trees or
vinestocks?”

“I was thinking, sire,” said the young Dharma Dhwaj to the warrior king
his father, “what women would say of us if they could compose Sanskrit
verses!”

“Then keep your thoughts to yourself,” replied the Raja, nettled at his
son daring to say a word in favour of the sex. “You always take the part
of wickedness and depravity---”

“Permit me, your majesty,” interrupted the Baital, “to conclude my
tale.”

When Madan-manjari, the jay, and Churaman, the parrot, had given these
illustrations of their belief, they began to wrangle, and words ran
high. The former insisted that females are the salt of the earth,
speaking, I presume, figuratively. The latter went so far as to assert
that the opposite sex have no souls, and that their brains are in a
rudimental and inchoate state of development. Thereupon he was tartly
taken to task by his master’s bride, the beautiful Chandravati, who told
him that those only have a bad opinion of women who have associated with
none but the vicious and the low, and that he should be ashamed to abuse
feminine parrots, because his mother had been one.

This was truly logical.

On the other hand, the jay was sternly reproved for her mutinous and
treasonable assertions by the husband of her mistress, Raja Ram, who,
although still a bridegroom, had not forgotten the gallant rule of his
syntax--

               The masculine is more worthy than the feminine;

till Madan-manjari burst into tears and declared that her life was not
worth having. And Raja Ram looked at her as if he could have wrung her
neck.

In short, Raja Vikram, all the four lost their tempers, and with them
what little wits they had. Two of them were but birds, and the others
seem not to have been much better, being young, ignorant, inexperienced,
and lately married. How then could they decide so difficult a question
as that of the relative wickedness and villany of men and women? Had
your majesty been there, the knot of uncertainty would soon have been
undone by the trenchant edge of your wit and wisdom, your knowledge and
experience. You have, of course, long since made up your mind upon the
subject?

Dharma Dhwaj would have prevented his father’s reply. But the youth had
been twice reprehended in the course of this tale, and he thought it
wisest to let things take their own way.

“Women,” quoth the Raja, oracularly, “are worse than we are; a man,
however depraved he may be, ever retains some notion of right and wrong,
but a woman does not. She has no such regard whatever.”

“The beautiful Bangalah Rani for instance?” said the Baital, with a
demonaic sneer.

At the mention of a word, the uttering of which was punishable by
extirpation of the tongue, Raja Vikram’s brain whirled with rage. He
staggered in the violence of his passion, and putting forth both hands
to break his fall, he dropped the bundle from his back. Then the Baital,
disentangling himself and laughing lustily, ran off towards the tree as
fast as his thin brown legs would carry him. But his activity availed
him little.

The king, puffing with fury, followed him at the top of his speed, and
caught him by his tail before he reached the siras-tree, hurled him
backwards with force, put foot upon his chest, and after shaking out the
cloth, rolled him up in it with extreme violence, bumped his back half
a dozen times against the stony ground, and finally, with a jerk, threw
him on his shoulder, as he had done before.

The young prince, afraid to accompany his father whilst he was pursuing
the fiend, followed slowly in the rear, and did not join him for some
minutes.

But when matters were in their normal state, the Vampire, who had
endured with exemplary patience the penalty of his impudence, began in
honeyed accents,

“Listen, O warrior king, whilst thy servant recounts unto thee another
true tale.”




THE VAMPIRE’S THIRD STORY -- Of a High-minded Family.

In the venerable city of Bardwan, O warrior king! (quoth the Vampire)
during the reign of the mighty Rupsen, flourished one Rajeshwar, a
Rajput warrior of distinguished fame. By his valour and conduct he had
risen from the lowest ranks of the army to command it as its captain.
And arrived at that dignity, he did not put a stop to all improvements,
like other chiefs, who rejoice to rest and return thanks. On the
contrary, he became such a reformer that, to some extent, he remodelled
the art of war.

Instead of attending to rules and regulations, drawn up in their studies
by pandits and Brahmans, he consulted chiefly his own experience and
judgment. He threw aside the systematic plans of campaigns laid down in
the Shastras or books of the ancients, and he acted upon the spur of
the moment. He displayed a skill in the choice of ground, in the use of
light troops, and in securing his own supplies whilst he cut off those
of the enemy, which Kartikaya himself, God of War, might have envied.
Finding that the bows of his troops were clumsy and slow to use, he had
them all changed before compelled so to do by defeat; he also gave his
attention to the sword handles, which cramped the men’s grasp but which
having been used for eighteen hundred years were considered perfect
weapons. And having organized a special corps of warriors using fire
arrows, he soon brought it to such perfection that, by using it against
the elephants of his enemies, he gained many a campaign.

One instance of his superior judgment I am about to quote to thee, O
Vikram, after which I return to my tale; for thou art truly a warrior
king, very likely to imitate the innovations of the great general
Rajeshwar.

(A grunt from the monarch was the result of the Vampire’s sneer.)

He found his master’s armies recruited from Northern Hindustan, and
officered by Kshatriya warriors, who grew great only because they grew
old and--fat. Thus the energy and talent of the younger men were wasted
in troubles and disorders; whilst the seniors were often so ancient
that they could not mount their chargers unaided, nor, when they were
mounted, could they see anything a dozen yards before them. But they
had served in a certain obsolete campaign, and until Rajeshwar gave them
pensions and dismissals, they claimed a right to take first part in all
campaigns present and future. The commander-in-chief refused to use any
captain who could not stand steady on his legs

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