Note 16 — Chapter XXXIV

Now, once on a time the prince, with his ministers, and accompanied by his beloved, went on a pilgrimage to a garden called Nágavana. There a certain merchant’s wife fell in love with Gomukha, and being repulsed, tried to kill him by offering to him a poisoned drink. But Gomukha came to hear of it from the lips of her confidante, and did not take that drink, but broke out into the following denunciation of women: “Alas! the Creator first created recklessness, and then women in imitation of it; by nature nothing is too bad for them to do. Surely this being they call woman, is created of nectar and poison, for, when she is attached to one, she is nectar, and when estranged she is indeed poison. Who can see through a woman, with loving face secretly planning crime? A wicked woman is like a lotus-bed with its flowers expanded, and an alligator concealed in it. But now and then there falls from heaven, urging on a host of virtues, a good woman that brings praise to her husband, like the pure light of the sun. But another, of evil augury, attached to strangers, not free from inordinate desires, wicked, bearing the poison of aversion,16 slays her husband like a female snake.”