The young prince Dharma Dhwaj could not help laughing at the thought of how this must sound in his father’s ear. And the Raja hearing the ill-timed merriment, sternly ordered the Baital to cease his immoralities and to continue his story.
Thus the lovely Unmadini, conceiving an extreme contempt for poets and literati, one day told her father, who greatly loved her, that her husband must be a fine young man who never wrote verses. Withal she insisted strongly on mental qualities and science, being a person of moderate mind and an adorer of talent—when not perverted to poetry.
As you may imagine, Raja Vikram, all the beauty’s bosom friends, seeing her refuse so many good offers, confidently predicted that she would pass through the jungle and content herself with a bad stick, or that she would lead ring-tailed apes in Patala.
At length when some time had elapsed, four suitors appeared from four different countries, all of them claiming equal excellence in youth and beauty, strength and understanding. And after paying their respects to Haridas, and telling him their wishes, they were directed to come early on the next morning and to enter upon the first ordeal—an intellectual conversation.
This they did.
‘Foolish the man,’ quoth the young Mahasani, ‘that seeks permanence in this world—frail as the stem of the plantain-tree, transient as the ocean foam.
‘All that is high shall presently fall; all that is low must finally perish.
‘Unwillingly do the manes of the dead taste the tears shed by their kinsmen: then wail not, but perform the funeral obsequies with diligence.’
‘What ill-omened fellow is this?’ quoth the fair Unmadini, who was sitting behind her curtain; ‘besides, he has dared to quote poetry!’ There was little chance of success for that suitor.
‘She is called a good woman, and a woman of pure descent,’ quoth the second suitor, ‘who serves him to whom her father and mother have given her; and it is written in the scriptures that a woman who in the lifetime of her husband becoming a devotee, engages in fasting, and in austere devotion, shortens his days, and hereafter falls into the fire. For it is said—