So great had been the ravages of these robbers in and round Kaivalyam that, without any mercy being shown to them, they and their followers were all ordered to be beheaded, and the prince was so much won over by the excellent qualities of Chandralêkhâ that, notwithstanding her birth as a dancing-girl, he regarded her as a gem of womankind and married her.
“Buy a girl in a bâzâr” (kanniyai kaḍaiyir koḷ) is a proverb. What matter where a girl is born provided she is virtuous! And Chandralêkhâ, by her excellent virtue, won a prince for her lord. And when that lord came to know of the real nature of his teacher, who was also the teacher of Chandralêkhâ, he banished him from his kingdom, as a merciful punishment, in consideration of his previous services.
[1] Learned woman.
[2] There would of course be no real marriage between a dancing girl and a Brâhmiṇ. Hence the insult.
[3] In stories of a master falling in love with the girl he has been teaching, he is usually himself made a soothsayer. In that capacity he asks the guardian (father or mother) to put the girl in a light box and to float her down a river. The girl in the box is taken by a young man, sometimes a prince, and becomes his wife. A tiger or a lion is then put into the box, and when the teacher, a great way down the river, takes the box and wishes to run away with the girl inside, he is torn to pieces, as a fit reward for his evil intentions, by the beast. But here the story takes a different turn.
[4] From this point up to the end we shall find the story to be similar to “Alî Bâbâ and the Forty Thieves” in the Arabian Nights, though the plot is different.