Note 15 — Chapter XVII

And she in her folly encouraged that husband of Śachí, being the slave of her passions; but the hermit Gautama found out the intrigue by his superhuman power, and arrived upon the scene. And Indra immediately assumed, out of fear, the form of a cat. Then Gautama said to Ahalyá; “Who is here?” She answered her husband ambiguously in the Prákrit dialect,—“Here forsooth is a cat,” so managing to preserve verbal truth.15 Then Gautama said, laughing, “It is quite true that your lover is here,—and he inflicted on her a curse, but ordained that it should terminate because she had shewed some regard for truth.” The curse ran as follows; “Woman of bad character, take for a long time the nature of a stone, until thou behold Ráma wandering in the forest.” And Gautama at the same time inflicted on the god Indra the following curse; “A thousand pictures of that which thou hast desired shall be upon thy body, but when thou shalt behold Tilottamá, a heavenly nymph, whom Viśvakarman shall make, they shall turn into a thousand eyes.” When he had pronounced this curse, the hermit returned to his austerities according to his desire, but Ahalyá for her part assumed the awful condition of a stone. And Indra immediately had his body covered with repulsive marks; for to whom is not immorality a cause of humiliation?