Now Keshav the Brahman had a daughter whose name was the Madhumalati or Sweet Jasmine. She was very beautiful. Whence did the gods procure the materials to form so exquisite a face? They took a portion of the most excellent part of the moon to form that beautiful face! Does any one seek a proof of this? Let him look at the empty places left in the moon. Her eyes resembled the full-blown blue nymphæa; her arms the charming stalk of the lotus; her flowing tresses the thick darkness of night.
When this lovely person arrived at a marriageable age, her mother, father, and brother, all three became very anxious about her. For the wise have said, ‘A daughter nubile but without husband is ever a calamity hanging over a house.’ And, ‘Kings, women, and climbing plants love those who are near them.’ Also, ‘Who is there that has not suffered from the sex? for a woman cannot be kept in due subjection, either by gifts or kindness, or correct conduct, or the greatest services, or the laws of morality, or by the terror of punishment, for she cannot discriminate between good and evil.’
It so happened that one day Keshav the Brahman went to the marriage of a certain customer of his,[118] and his son repaired to the house of a spiritual preceptor in order to read. During their absence, a young man came to the house, when the Sweet Jasmine’s mother, inferring his good qualities from his good looks, said to him, ‘I will give to thee my daughter in marriage.’ The father also had promised his daughter to a Brahman youth whom he had met at the house of his employer; and the brother likewise had betrothed his sister to a fellow student at the place where he had gone to read.
After some days father and son came home, accompanied by these two suitors, and in the house a third was already seated. The name of the first was Tribikram, of the second Baman, and of the third Madhusadan. The three were equal in mind and body, in knowledge, and in age.
Then the father, looking upon them, said to himself, ‘Ho! there is one bride and three bridegrooms; to whom shall I give, and to whom shall I not give? We three have pledged our word to these three. A strange circumstance has occurred; what must we do?’
He then proposed to them a trial of wisdom, and made them agree that he who should quote the most excellent saying of the wise should become his daughter’s husband.
Quoth Tribikram: ‘Courage is tried in war; integrity in the payment of debt and interest; friendship in distress; and the faithfulness of a wife in the day of poverty.’
Baman proceeded: ‘That woman is destitute of virtue who in her father’s house is not in subjection, who wanders to feasts and amusements, who throws off her veil in the presence of men, who remains as a guest in the houses of strangers, who is much devoted to sleep, who drinks inebriating beverages, and who delights in distance from her husband.’
‘Let none,’ pursued Madhusadan, ‘confide in the sea, nor in whatever has claws or horns, or who carries deadly weapons; neither in a woman, nor in a king.’