“So let us leave this place quickly, for this warder always murders next morning[17] the companions of his midnight rambles, for fear his secrets should be disclosed. And to-day he has brought you here, after you have been a witness of his nightly adventures, so fasten, my prince, on your neck this thread prepared by the witch, and turn yourself into a peacock, and go out by this small window; then I will stretch out my hand and loosen the thread from your neck, which you must put up to me, and I will fasten it on my own neck and go out quickly in the same way. Then you must loosen the thread round my neck, and we shall both recover our former condition. But it is impossible to go out by the door which is fastened from outside.”
When the sagacious Bhímaparákrama had said this, Mṛigánkadatta agreed to his proposal and so escaped from the house with him; and he returned to his lodging where his other two friends were; there he and his friends all spent the night pleasantly in describing to one another all their adventures.
And in the morning Máyávaṭu, the Bhilla king, the head of that town, came to Mṛigánkadatta, and after asking him whether he had spent the night pleasantly, he said to amuse him, “Come, let us play dice.” Then Mṛigánkadatta’s friend Śrutadhi, observing that the Bhilla had come with his warder, said to him, “Why should you play dice? Have you forgotten? To-day we are to see the dance of the warder’s peacock, which was talked about yesterday.” When the Śavara king heard that, he remembered, and out of curiosity sent the warder to fetch the peacock. And the warder remembered the wounds he had inflicted, and thought to himself, “Why did I in my carelessness forget to put to death that thief, who witnessed my secret nightly expedition, though I placed him in the peacock’s house? So I will go quickly, and do both the businesses.” And thereupon he went quickly home.
But when he reached his own palace and looked into the house where the peacock was, he could not find either the thief or the peacock. Then terrified and despondent he returned and said to his sovereign; “My lord, that peacock has been taken away in the night by a thief.” Then Śrutadhi said smiling, “The man who took away your peacock is renowned as a clever thief.” And when Máyávaṭu saw them all smiling, and looking at one another, he asked with the utmost eagerness what it all meant. Then Mṛigánkadatta told the Śavara king all his adventures with the warder; how he met him in the night, and how the warder entered the queen’s apartment as a paramour, and how he drew his knife in a quarrel; how he himself went to the house of the warder, and how he set Bhímaparákrama free from his peacock transformation, and how he escaped thence.
Then Máyávaṭu, after hearing that, and seeing that the maid in the harem had a knife-wound in the hand, and that when that thread was replaced for a moment on the neck of Bhímaparákrama, he again became a peacock, put his warder to death at once as a violator of his harem. But he spared the life of that unchaste queen, on the intercession of Mṛigánkadatta, and renouncing her society, banished her to a distance from his court. And Mṛigánkadatta, though eager to win Śaśánkavatí, remained some more days in the Pulinda’s town, treated with great consideration by him, looking for the arrival of the rest of his friends and his re-union with them.
[1] Literally, “water-men.” Perhaps they were of the same race as Grendel the terrible nicor. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, p. 185 and ff., Grimm’s Irische Märchen, p. cv, Kuhn’s Westfälische Märchen, Vol. II, p. 35, Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 187 and ff., and the 6th and 20th Játakas. See also Grohmann’s account of the “Wassermann,” Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 148.
[2] The MS. in the Sanskrit College seems to me to read púrṇośya.
[3] I read ’nyuveśustham, which is the reading of the Sanskrit College MS.
[4] The silk-cotton tree.