"Long ages ago two were travelling through a mountainous country, a
man and his wife. And behold as they journeyed there reached them from
the other side of a rock a voice of such surpassing sweetness that the
two stood still to listen, the man and his wife; and not they only, but
their very beasts pricked up their ears erect to drink in the sound.
"Then spoke the woman,--
"'A man with a voice so melodious must be a man goodly to see. Shall
we not stop and find him out?'"
"But the saying pleased not her husband, nor was he minded that she
should see who it was that sang so sweetly; therefore he answered
her,--
"'Wherefore should we search him out; is it not enough that we hear
his voice?'
"When the wife had heard his answer, she said no more about searching
out whence the voice proceeded; only the first time they passed a
mountain-rill she said to her husband,--
"'Behold, I faint for thirst in this heat. Now, as thou lovest me,
fetch me a draught of that cool water from the mountain-rill.' So
the man got down from his horse, and, taking his wife's cup (10),
went to the rill to fetch water.
"While he was thus occupied, the wife slid down from off her horse
also, and, going silently behind him, pushed him over the precipice
and killed him. Then she set out to find out who it was sang so
melodiously. When she had followed up the sound she found herself in
presence, not of a man goodly to behold, but of a wretched, loathsome
object, sunk down against the foot of the rock, deformed in person
and covered with sores. Notwithstanding that the undeception was so
revolting, she yet took him up on her back and carried him with her;
but as the man was heavy and the way steep, the fatigue so wearied
her that at the end of a little time she died.
"Was this woman to be counted a good woman or a bad?"
When the King had made an end of telling the tale, he looked towards
Naran-Dâkinî as challenging her to answer.
But Naran-Dâkinî held her peace and spoke never a word.
Then, when the far-seeing and experienced minister whom Vikramâditja
had transformed into the lamp saw that she yet held her peace,
he said,--
"How should an unsouled being such as I, the Lamp, find out the right
meaning? nevertheless, not to leave the words of the high King without
an answer, I will even venture to suggest that to me it seemeth she
must be counted a good woman; because though she killed her husband,
yet she made atonement for her fault by raising the sick man and
carrying him with her--"
But before he could make an end of speaking Naran-Dâkinî cast at him
a glance of contempt and scorn, and she exclaimed,--
"How should there be any good in a woman who killed her lawful husband,
and that only because her ears were tickled with the artful melody
of an harmonious voice? Of a truth she must have been a veritable
schimnu, and if she took the sick man with her, was it not only that
she might devour him at leisure?"