Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/203

Rh and left the kingdom in charge of his illegitimate son, Kakanan, who being the son of a courtezan could not succeed to the crown, and therefore would not be attacked by Parasurama. Kâkanthan’s son, having made an immodest proposal to the wife of a Brahmin who was returning alone through the city gate, after bathing in the Kaveri, was killed by his father. Another son of the same king was also killed by the father, for having insulted similarly a chaste and beautiful woman who was the daughter of a merchant.”

Is there any misfortune of the kind which has occurred now?” enquired the king: and the monk related to him that Prince Udayâ-kumâra had been of late courting Manimêkalai although she had become a nun: that to avoid him she assumed the shape of Kâya-chandikai: and that the husband of the latter killed the prince out of jealousy, as he attempted to enter his wife’s apartment at midnight. The king was shocked and grieved to hear of the melancholy end of his son, and looking at his prime-minister, Choliya-enâti, said, “The punishment that I should have meted out to my wayward son, has been inflicted by Kanchanan. Let the prince’s body be cremated at once and the daughter of the actress be confined in prison.”

The Queen, Raja-maha-devi, bereaved of her beloved prince was disconsolate. She was however bent on taking revenge on Manimêkalai for having been the cause of her son’s death, and said to the king that it was unjust to confine in prison a pious and intelligent maiden like Manimêkalai. The king having consented to her release, she sent for Manimêkalai and directed her to lodge with her in the palace. She then plotted to disgrace Manimêkalai, and inviting an illiterate youth gave him a handful of gold coins, and told him to seduce Manimêkalai, whom she also tried to render unconscious by administering drugs. But Manimêkalai was unaffected by the drugs, and assumed the form of a man, when the youth came to her; and he fled out of the city, afraid that the Queen had attempted to entrap him in some dangerous intrigue. The Queen then shut up Manimêkalai in a room, on the pretence that she was unwell, and gave her no food. Manimêkalai repeated the incantation which could save her from hunger, and remained