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.