Volume 2 / Book 12 — Chapter XCVIII. (Vetála 24.)

Then the brave king Trivikramasena, disregarding the awful night, which in that terrible cemetery assumed the appearance of a Rákshasí, being black with darkness, and having the flames of the funeral pyres for fiery eyes, again went to the aśoka-tree, and took from it the Vetála, and put him on his shoulder.

And while he was going along with him, as before, the Vetála again said to that king, “O king, I am tired out with going backwards and forwards, though you are not: so I will put to you one difficult question, and mind you listen to me.”

Story of the father that married the daughter and the son that married the mother.

And when that daughter had attained a marriageable age, king Dharma was ejected from his throne by his relations, who banded together and divided his realm. Then he fled from his kingdom at night with his wife and that daughter, taking with him a large number of valuable jewels, and he deliberately set out for Málava the dwelling-place of his father-in-law. And in the course of that same night he reached the Vindhya forest with his wife and daughter. And when he entered it, the night, that had escorted him thus far, took leave of him with drops of dew by way of tears. And the sun ascended the eastern mountain, stretching forth its first rays, like a warning hand, to dissuade him from entering that brigand-haunted wood. Then he travelled on through it with his wife and daughter, having his feet wounded with sharp points of kuśa-grass, and he reached a village of the Bhillas. It was full of men that robbed their neighbours of life and property, and shunned by the virtuous, like the strong city of Death.

Then beholding the king from a distance with his dress and ornaments, many Śavaras, armed with various weapons, ran to plunder him. When king Dharma saw that, he said to his daughter and wife, “The barbarians will seize on you first, so enter the wood in this direction.” When the king said this to them, queen Chandravatí and her daughter Lávaṇyavatí, in their terror, plunged into the middle of the wood. And the brave king, armed with sword and shield, killed many of the Śavaras, who came towards him, raining arrows. Then the chief summoned the whole village, and falling on the king, who stood there alone, they slashed his shield to pieces and killed him; and then the host of bandits departed with his ornaments. And queen Chandravatí, concealed in a thicket of the wood, saw from a distance her husband slain: so in her bewilderment she fled with her daughter, and they entered another dense forest a long distance off. There they found that the shadows of the trees, afflicted by the heat of midday, had laid themselves at their cool roots, imitating travellers. So, tired and sad, the queen sat down weeping with her daughter, in a spot on the bank of a lotus-lake, under the shade of an aśoka-tree.

In the meanwhile a chief, who lived near, came to that forest on horseback, with his son, to hunt. He was named Chaṇḍasinha, and when he saw their footsteps imprinted in the dust, he said to his son Sinhaparákrama, “We will follow up these lovely and auspicious tracks, and if we find the ladies to whom they belong, you shall choose whichever you please of them.” When Chaṇḍasinha said this, his son Sinhaparákrama said to him, “I should like to have for a wife the one that has these small feet, for I know that she will be young and suited to me. But this one with large feet, being older than the other, will just suit you. When Chaṇḍasinha heard this speech of his son’s, he said to him, “What is this that you say? Your mother has only recently gone to heaven, and now that I have lost so good a wife, how can I desire another?” When Chaṇḍasinha’s son heard that, he said to him, “Father, do not say so, for the home of a householder is empty without a wife. Moreover, have you not heard the stanza composed by Múladeva? ‘Who, that is not a fool, enters that house in which there is no shapely love eagerly awaiting his return, which, though called a house, is really a prison without chains.’ So, father, my death will lie at your door, if you do not take as your wife that companion of the lady whom I have chosen.”

When Chaṇḍasinha heard this speech of his son’s, he approved it, and went on slowly with him, tracking up their footsteps. And he reached that spot near the lake, and saw that dark queen Chandravatí, adorned with many strings of pearls, sitting in the shade of a tree. She looked like the midnight sky in the middle of the day, and her daughter Lávaṇyavatí, like the pure white moonlight, seemed to illumine her. And he and his son eagerly approached her, and she, when she saw him, rose up terrified, thinking that he was a bandit.

When Chaṇḍasinha said this, the queen sighed, and full of shame and grief, slowly told him her story. Then Chaṇḍasinha, seeing that she had no protector, comforted her and her daughter, and coaxed them with kind words into becoming members of his family. And he and his son put the queen and her daughter on their horses, and conducted them to their rich palace in Vittapapurí. And the queen, being helpless, submitted to his will, as if she had been born again in a second life. What is an unprotected woman, fallen into calamity in a foreign land, to do? Then Sinhaparákrama, the son of Chaṇḍasinha, made Chandravatí his wife, on account of the smallness of her feet. And Chaṇḍasinha made her daughter, the princess Lávaṇyavatí, his wife, on account of the largeness of her feet. For they made this agreement originally, when they saw the two tracks of the small footsteps and the large footsteps: and who ever swerves from his plighted word?

So, from the mistake about the feet, the daughter became the wife of the father, and the mother the wife of the son, and so the daughter became the mother-in-law of her own mother, and the mother became the daughter-in-law of her own daughter. And in course of time, both of them had by those husbands sons and daughters, and they also had sons and daughters in due course of time. So Chaṇḍasinha and Sinhaparákrama lived in their city, having obtained as wives Lávaṇyavatí and Chandravatí.

When the Vetála had told this story on the way at night, he again put a question to king Trivikramasena; “Now, king, about the children who were in course of time born to the mother and daughter by the son and the father in those two lines—what relationship did they bear to one another? Tell me if you know. And the curse before threatened will descend on you, if you know and do not tell.”

Then the king was led by the speech of the Vetála, who was pleased with him, to look upon the ascetic Kshántiśíla as his enemy, but he went to him in high spirits, where he sat under that banyan-tree, and took with him that human corpse.