—It appears, my dear, that this youth Upagoopta pleases you exceedingly well, since you never buy in any shop but his father’s.
—Daughter of my master, answered the maid, besides being comely, clever and polite, Upagoopta, the son of the merchant, passes his life in observing the law.
These words awakened in Vasavadatta’s heart a desire to meet Upagoopta and she bade her maid go back and make an appointment with him. But the youth vouchsafed no other reply than:—My sister, the hour has not yet arrived.
Vasavadatta thought that Upagoopta refused because he could not afford to pay the high price she demanded for her favours, and she bade her maid tell him that she did not intend to charge him a single cowry if only he would come. But Upagoopta replied in the same words:—My sister, the hour has not yet arrived.
Shortly after, the courtesan Vasavadatta, annoyed by the jealousy of one of her lovers, who objected to her selling herself to a wealthy old voluptuary, ordered her servants to kill the troublesome fellow. They did so without taking sufficient precautions against discovery; the crime became known and the King of Mathura commanded the executioner to cut off her hands, feet and nose, and abandon her thus mutilated among the graves of the dead.
Upagoopta hearing of it, said to himself: When she was arrayed in fine clothes and no jewels were rare and costly enough to adorn her body, it was a counsel of wisdom for those who aspire to liberation from the bondage of sin to avoid her; with her beauty, however, she has certainly lost her pride and lustfulness, and this is the hour.
Accordingly, Upagoopta went up to the cemetery where the executioner had left Vasavadatta maimed and disfigured. The maid, having remained faithful, saw him approach and informed her mistress who, in a last effort at coquetterie, told her to cover the hideous wounds with a piece of cloth. Then, bowing her head before her visitor, Vasavadatta spoke:
—My master, when my body was sweet as a flower, clothed in rich garments and decked with pearls and rubies; when I was goodly to behold, you made me unhappy by refusing to meet me. Why do you come now to look at one from whom all charm and pleasure has fled, a frightful wreck, soiled with blood and filth?
—My sister, answered Upagoopta, the attraction of your charms and the love of the pleasures they held out, could not move me; but the delights of this world having revealed their hollowness, here I am to bring the consolation of the lotus of the law.
So the son of the merchant comforted the courtesan doing penance for her transgressions, and she died in a confession of faith to the word of the Buddha, hopeful of rebirth on a plane of chastened existence.