Volume 2 / Book 12 — Chapter LXXX. (Vetála 6.)

Then king Trivikramasena again went to the aśoka-tree, and carried off from it that Vetála on his shoulder, as before, and began to return with him swiftly in silence. And on the way the Vetála again said to him, “King, you are wise and brave, therefore I love you, so I will tell you an amusing tale, and mark well my question.”

Story of the lady who caused her brother and husband to change heads.

Early the next day Dhavala set out for his father-in-law’s house, with Madanasundarí and his brother-in-law. And he reached with his two companions the city of Śobhávatí, and he saw the great temple of Durgá, when he arrived near it; and then he said to his wife and brother-in-law, in a fit of pious devotion, “Come and let us visit the shrine of this awful goddess.” When the brother-in-law heard this, he said to him, in order to dissuade him, “How can so many of us approach the goddess empty-handed?” Then Dhavala said, “Let me go alone, and you can wait outside.” When he had said this, he went off to pay his respects to the goddess.

When he had entered her temple, and had worshipped, and had meditated upon that goddess, who with her eighteen mighty arms had smitten terrible Dánavas, and who had flung under the lotus of her foot and trampled to pieces the Asura Mahisha, a train of pious reflection was produced in his mind by the impulse of Destiny, and he said to himself, “People worship this goddess with various sacrifices of living creatures, so why should not I, to obtain salvation, appease her with the sacrifice of myself?” After he had said this to himself, he took from her inner shrine, which was empty of worshippers, a sword which had been long ago offered to her by some pilgrims, and, after fastening his own head by his hair to the chain of the bell, he cut it off with the sword, and when cut off, it fell on the ground.

And his brother-in-law, after waiting a long time, without his having returned, went into that very temple of the goddess to look for him. But when he saw his sister’s husband lying there decapitated, he also was bewildered, and he cut off his head in the same way with that very same sword.

Then they told one another what had befallen them, and were happy, and after they had worshipped the goddess Durgá, the three continued their journey. But Madanasundarí, as she was going along, saw that she had changed their heads, and she was bewildered and puzzled as to what course to take.

“So tell me, king, which of the two people, thus mixed together, was her husband; and if you know and do not tell, the curse previously denounced shall fall on you!” When king Trivikramasena heard this tale and this question from the Vetála, he answered him as follows: “That one of the two, on whom her husband’s head was fixed, was her husband, for the head is the chief of the limbs, and personal identity depends upon it.” When the king had said this, the Vetála again left his shoulder unperceived, and the king again set out to fetch him.

Note.

Oesterley remarks that the Hindi version of this story has been translated into French by Garcin de Tassy in the Journal des Savants, 1836, p. 415, and by Lancereau in the Journal Asiatique, Ser. 4, Tom. 19, pp. 390–395. In the Tútínámah, (Persian, No. 24, in Iken, No. 102; Turkish, Rosen, II, p. 169) the washerman is replaced by an Indian prince, his friend by a priest, and the rest is the same as in our text. That Goethe took that part of his Legende, which is based on this tale, from Iken’s translation, has been shewn by Benfey in Orient und Occident, Vol. I, p. 719. (Oesterley’s Baitál Pachísí, pp. 195, 196.)