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whom he loved more than his life. And she was given to an excellent
young merchant named Samudradatta, equal to her in rank, distinguished
for wealth and youth, who was an object that the eyes of lovely women
loved to feast on, as the partridges on the rays of the moon, and who
dwelt in the city of Támraliptí which is inhabited by honourable men. Once on a time, the merchant's daughter, while she was living in her father's house, and her husband was in his own country, saw at a distance a certain young and good-looking man. The tickle woman, deluded by Mára,*[1] invited him by means of a confidante, and made him her secret paramour. And from that time forth she spent every night with him, and her affections were fixed upon him only.
But one day the husband of her youth returned from his own land, appearing to her parents like delight in bodily form. And on that day of rejoicing she was adorned, but she would have nothing to say to her husband in spite of her mother's injunctions, but when he spoke to her, she pretended to be asleep, as her heart was fixed on another. And then her husband, being drowsy with wine, and tired with his journey, was over-powered by sleep. In the meanwhile, as all the people of the house, having eaten and drunk, were fast asleep, a thief made a hole in the wall and entered their apartment. At that very moment the merchant's daughter rose up, without seeing the thief, and went out secretly, having made an assignation with her lover. When the thief saw that, his object being frustrated, he said to himself, " She has gone out in the dead of night adorned with those very ornaments which I came here to steal; so I will watch where she goes." When the thief had formed this intention, he went out, and followed that merchant's daughter Vasudattá, keeping an eye on her, but himself unobserved.
But she, with flowers and other things of the kind in her hands, went out, accompanied by a single confidante, who was in the secret, and entered a garden at no great distance outside the city.
And in it she saw her lover, who had come there to meet her, hanging dead on a tree, with a halter round his neck, for the city-guards had caught him there at night and hanged him, on the supposition that he was a thief. Then she was distracted and beside herself, and exclaiming, " I am ruined," she fell on the ground and lamented with plaintive cries. Then she took down her dead paramour from the tree, and placing him in a sitting position, she adorned him with unguents and flowers, and though he was senseless, embraced him, with mind blinded by passion and grief. And when in her sorrow she raised up his mouth and kissed it, her dead paramour, being animated by a Vetála, suddenly bit off her nose. Then she left him
- ↑ * The god of love, with Buddists the Devil. Benfey considers that the Vetála Panchavinśati was originally Buddhistic.
