her. The king of the place, who had been out on a hunting expedition, came to where she was; and ravished with her charms, took her home, and married her. But she had not forgotten her grudge against the prince who had escaped her jaws; and she devised a plan to destroy him. She pretended to be very ill, and laid herself down on a bed, under which she spread some dried flax plants. They crackled, and she said that the noise proceeded from her bones that were broken. Her husband was duped, and in great anxiety he called in the royal physician, whom she bribed to tell the king that the only remedy in this difficult and unheard-of case was that she might be made to inhale the smoke caused by burning the planks to be had from that particular mango tree at the foot of which she had been found. The king sent men to cut down the tree, and the prince, who was still within it, to save himself from impending peril asked it to change him into one of its fruit, and cast him into the adjacent tank, with instructions to a boal[1] fish in it to give him a place in its belly. His wishes were complied with.
The planks were in due time burnt in the Rakkhashi's room, but finding no blood marks on them, she knew that the subject of her malice had escaped her, and, by the exercise of her superhuman powers, learnt that he was in the shape of a mango, safe inside a boal fish in the tank near the destroyed mango tree. She communicated this to the physician who was in her pay, and induced him to get the permission of the king to fetch the fish, alleging that the inhalation of the smoke of the planks had done her no good. The permission was asked and granted, and the fish brought into the palace, but no mango was found on cutting it open, for the prince had persuaded his protector, the boal, to transform him into a snail. The king then became quite hopeless of the recovery of his beloved wife.
Meanwhile the prince, who had been changed into a snail,
- ↑ The Boal is a fish, large in size, with a head very much resembling that of the shark.
