"Trembling, she tries to restrain my hand, which is busy with her girdle; while I embrace her ardently she puts up her own hands to protect her bosom; her countenance with the beautiful eyelashes she turns aside when I try to raise it for a kiss; by thus struggling she affords me the same delight as if I had attained what I desire."
Again the second queen and her maid appear unexpectedly and disturb the king's bliss. Her object is to go to the king's picture in the water-house and beg its pardon for having been disrespectful, this being better, in her opinion, than appearing before the king himself, since he has given his heart to another, while in that picture he has eyes for her alone (as Malavika, too, had noticed when she entered the water-house). The viduschaka has proved an unreliable sentinel; he has fallen asleep at the door of the house. The queen's maid perceives this and, to tease him, touches him with a crooked staff. He awakes crying that a snake has bitten him. The king runs out and is confronted again by Iravati. "Well, well!" she exclaims, "this couple meet in broad daylight and without hindrance to gratify their wishes!" "An unheard-of greeting is this, my dear," said the king. "You are mistaken; I see no cause for anger. I merely liberated the two girls because this is a holiday, on which servants must not be confined, and they came here to thank me." But he is glad to escape when a messenger arrives opportunely to announce that a yellow ape has frightened the princess.
"My heart trembles when I think of the queen," says Malavika, left alone with her companion. "What will become of me now?" But the queen knows her duty, according to Hindoo custom. She makes her maids array Malavika in marriage dress, and then sends a message to the king saying that she awaits him with Malavika and her attendants. The girl does not know why she has been so richly attired, and when the king beholds her he says to himself: "We are so near and yet apart. I seem to myself like the bird Tschakravaka;[277] and the name of the night which does not allow me to be united with my love is Dharini." At that moment two captive girls are brought before the assemblage, and to everyone's surprise they greet Malavika as "Princess." A princess she proves to be, on inquiry, and the queen now carries out the plan she had had in her mind, with the consent also of the second queen, who sends her apologies at the same time. "Take her," says Dharini to the king, and at a hint of the viduschaka she takes a veil and by putting it on the new bride makes her a queen and spouse of equal rank with herself. And the king answers:
"I am not surprised at your magnanimity. If women are faithful and kind to their husbands, they even bring, by way of serving him, new wives to him, like unto the rivers which provide that the water of other streams also is carried to the ocean. I have now but one more wish; be hereafter always, irascible queen, prepared to do me homage. I wish this for the sake of the other women."
IV. THE STORY OF SAVITRI
King Asvapati, though an honest, virtuous, pious man, was not blessed with offspring, and this made him unhappy.[278] He curbed all his appetites and for eighteen years lived a life of devotion to his religious duties. At the expiration of these years Savitri, the daughter of the sun-god, appeared to him and offered to reward him by granting a favor. "Sons I crave, many sons, O goddess, sons to preserve my family," he answered. But Savitri promised him a daughter; and she was born to him by his oldest wife and was named after the goddess Savitri. She grew up to be so beautiful, so broad-hipped, like a golden statue, that she seemed of divine origin, and, abashed, none of the men came to choose her as his wife. This saddened her father and he said:
"Daughter, it is time for you to marry, but no one comes to ask me for you. Go and seek your own husband, a man your equal in worth. And when you have chosen, you must let me know. Then I will consider him, and betroth you. For, according to the laws, a father who does not give his daughter in marriage is blameworthy."
And Savitri went on a golden chariot with a royal retinue, and she visited all the groves of the saints and at last found a man after her heart, whose name was Satyavant. Then she returned to her father—who was just conversing with the divine sage Nârada—and told him of her choice. But Nârada exclaimed: "Woe and alas, you have chosen one who is, indeed, endowed with all the virtues, but who is doomed to die a year from this day." Thereupon the king begged Savitri to choose another for her husband, but she replied: "May his life be long or short, may he have merits or no merits, I have selected him as my husband, and a second I shall not choose." Then the king and Nârada agreed not to oppose her, and she went with her father to the grove where she had seen Satyavant, the man of her choice. The king spoke to this man's father and said: "Here, O royal saint, is my lovely daughter, Savitri; take her as your daughter-in-law in accordance with your duty as friend." And the saint replied: "Long have I desired such a bond of relationship; but I have lost my royal dignity, and how could your daughter endure the hardships of life in the forest?" But the king replied that they heeded not such things and their mind was made up. So all the Brahmans were called together and the king gave his daughter to Satyavant, who was pleased to win a wife endowed with so many virtues.
When her father had departed, Savitri put away all her ornaments and assumed the plain garb of the saints. She was modest, self-contained, and strove to make herself useful and to fulfil the wishes of all. But she counted the days, and the time came when she had to say to herself, "In three days he must die." And she made a vow and stood in one place three days and nights; on the following day he was to die. In the afternoon her husband took his axe on his shoulder and went into the primeval forest to get some wood and fruits. For the first time she asked to go with him. "The way is too difficult for you," said he, but she persisted; and her heart was consumed by the flames of sadness. He called her attention, as they walked on, to the limpid rivers and noble trees decked with flowers of many colors, but she had eyes only for him, following his every movement; for she looked on him as a dead man from that hour. He was filling his basket with fruits when suddenly he was seized with violent headache and longing for sleep. She took his head on her lap and awaited his last moment.
All at once she saw a man, in red attire, of fearful aspect, with a rope in his hand. And she said: "Who are you?" "You," he replied, "are a woman faithful to your husband and of good deeds, therefore will I answer you. I am Yama, and I have come to take away your husband, whose life has reached its goal." And with a mighty jerk he drew from the husband's body his spirit, the size of a thumb, and forthwith the breath of life departed from the body. Having carefully tied the soul, Yama departed toward the south. Savitri, tortured by anguish, followed him. "Turn back, Savitri," he said; "you owe your husband nothing further, and you have gone as far as you can go." "Wherever my husband goes or is taken, there I must go; that is an eternal duty." Thereupon Yama offered to grant any favor she might ask—except the life of her husband. "Restore the sight of the blind king, my father-in-law," she said; and he answered: "It is done already." He offered a second favor and she said: "Restore his kingdom to my father-in-law;" and it was granted, as was also the third wish: "Grant one hundred sons to my father, who has none." Her fourth wish, too, he agreed to: that she herself might have a hundred sons; and as he made the fifth and last wish unconditional, she said: