Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/32

 " Thus is the way of a woman's heart truly hard to understand. They fall in love with strange men, and die when separated from their husbands." When Tapantaka said this, Hariśikha said in his turn, " Have you not heard what happened in this way to Devadása?"

Story of the faithless wife who had her husband murdered.:— Of old time there lived in a village a householder, named Devadása, and he had a wife named with good cause Duhśilá.* And the neighbours knew that she was in love with another man. Now, once on a time, Devadása went to the king's court on some business. And his wife, who wished to have him murdered, took advantage of the occasion to bring her paramour, whom she concealed on the roof of the house. And in the dead of night she had her husband Devadása killed by that paramour, when he was asleep. And she dismissed her paramour, and remained quiet until the morning, when she went out, and exclaimed, " My husband has been killed by robbers." Then his relations came there, and after they had seen his body, they said, " If he was killed by thieves, why did they not carry off anything?" After they had said this, they asked her young son, who was there, "Who killed your father?" Then he said plainly; "A man had gone up on the roof here in the day, he came down in the night, and killed my father before my eyes; but first my mother took me and rose up from my father's side." When the boy said this, the dead man's relations knew that Devadása had been killed by his wife's paramour, and they searched him out, and put him to death then and there, and they adopted that boy and banished Duhśilá. " So you see, a woman, whose heart is fixed on another man, infallibly kills like the snake." When Hariśikha said this, Gomukha said again— " Why should we tell any out-of-the-way story? Listen to the ridiculous fate that befell Vajrasára here, the servant of the king of Vatsa."

Story of Vajrasára whose wife cut off his nose and ears.:—He, being brave and handsome, had a beautiful wife that came from Málava, whom he loved more than his own body. Once on a time his wife's father, longing to see her, came in person, accompanied by his son, from Málava, to invite him and her. Then Vajrasára entertained him, and informed the king, and went, as he had been invited to do, to Maláva with his wife and his father-in-law. And after he had rested a month only in

accompany their dead husbands to the world of spirits, seems to rest upon incontestable evidence, and there can be no doubt that ' a rite of suttee, like that of modern India'prevailed among the heathen Slavonians, the descendant, perhaps as Mr. Tylor remarks (Primitive Culture, I, 421) of 'widow-sacrifice' among many of the European nations, of ' an ancient Arjan rite belonging originally to a period even earlier then the Veda ".