Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/400

312 attendants, seeing a man, gave chase, but he ran for refuge to the nearest house. The owner was sitting at rice with his wife and daughter, and on being appealed to by the youth told him to sit down with them and put his hand into the dish. When the ushers came into the house the owner asked them what they wanted and why they disturbed him when at meals with his wife and son-in-law. He told them that if they thought anyone else was concealed on the premises they might search. As they found no one else they went away. The young man married the daughter of the house. Shortly after the princess began to pine away, and the king being unhappy asked her the cause, and she told him it was because she was separated from her lover. The king thereupon ordered the whole of the people, from the highest to the lowest, to come to a great entertainment, and the youth and his wife came to it. The first wife, who had set him afloat, also came. The princess claimed the youth as her husband; and the first wife, recognising him, also laid claim to him. The present wife declined to give him up, and they all three agreed to abide by the decision- of Princess Sudhammacari.

On going before her, the first wife stated that she had performed the funeral rights because she believed him to be dead.

The princess claimed him as being given to her by her father, and that he had only run away through fear that the judge's attendants might kill him.

The present wife claimed him on the score of having saved him from death, as the judge's servants took him for a thief.

The Princess Sudhammacari declared judgment as follows:—

"As for the old wife, since she performed her husband's funeral rites by means of water, though he has come to life again she has no legal claim to him. The princess, when he was pursued by the judge's men, did not protect him, and, if he had died in consequence, she would have lost him; she therefore has no right to call him husband. On the other hand, the parents of the girl who now has him acted so as to prevent a man in peril of death from dying, therefore let her who has him keep him as her partner for life."