But Hasamúrtí heard him, and she said to herself: My father is a fool, and doubtless this man has some design against my honour. He shall find I can do more than laugh. So she said to her father: Have no fear: this is a holy man. But she secretly stationed all her maids in readiness in the next room. Then when the ascetic found himself alone with the king's daughter, his evil passion rose to such a pitch that he could scarcely contain himself. Nevertheless he drew a circle, with trembling hands, and placing the king's daughter in it, he muttered awhile, and then said: My daughter, you must have the quarters of heaven for your only garments[[6]], or the spell will not work. Remove your clothes. But Hasamúrtí said: Reverend Sir, it is impossible. Then he caught hold of her. But she clapped her hands, and her maids ran in and seized him. And she said: Examine this ascetic, and see whether he is a man or not. So they did so, and said, laughing: Madam, he is very much a man indeed. Then Hasamúrtí said: Take this knife, and deprive him of his manhood. And they did as she commanded them.
Then Hasamúrtí said to him: Now go, for the incantation is finished. And if you please, complain to the king, my father: I have the evidence to convict you. So the maids released that ascetic. But he, as soon as they let him go, began to laugh, and continued to laugh till he reached the king. And he said: O king, do not hinder me: we have successfully performed the incantation, and see, I have caught the laughing demon, and am carrying him away. And he went away laughing, with death in his heart.
So now tell me, Princess, why did that ascetic laugh? And Rasakósha ceased. Then the Princess frowning slightly, replied: He laughed, in the cowardice of his soul, with exultation at having escaped from those maids as from the mouth of death: counting the failure of his scheme and the loss of his manhood as nothing, in comparison with the preservation of bare life. For cowards count the loss of life as the greatest of evils: but the great-souled esteem it as the least, and would forfeit it a thousand times, rather than fail in the object at which they aim.
And when she had said this, the Princess looked significantly at the King, and rose up and went out, and the King's heart went with her. But the King and Rasakósha returned to their own apartments.
[[1]] Should any reader be of opinion that I ought to have omitted or emasculated this story, I can only reply that I wish all Bowdlerisers no worse fate than that of the ascetic in the tent.
[[2]] History repeats itself. M. Rousselet, who travelled in India in the sixties, mentions, in his L'Inde des Rajas, a case that he saw in Rájputána of a holy man who suspended himself in a tree 'like a ham.'
[[3]] i.e. 'laughter incarnate.'
[[4]] Attahasa, 'loud laughter,' is a name of Shiwa. Kálidás (in his Cloud, v. 62) compares the snowy peaks of Mount Kailas to the laughter of Shiwa 'rolled into a ball.' (Note, that laughter is always white in Sanskrit poetry.)
[[5]] Spado factus sum. The 'dweller' is Párwatí, or Durgá, Shiwa's other half, in the strict sense of the term.
[[6]] Digambara, i.e. you must be stark-naked, or in a state of nature.