“Yes,” replied Virūpa.
“I will bring the five hundred women before you,” said Mahaushadha. “If you pick out from among them one who does not belong to you, your body shall be cut to pieces with weapons.” [[181]]
Then the king ordered all his wives to appear arrayed in all their bravery, and to make the greatest possible display of ornaments. And the king caused Udumbarikā to be placed at the head of all the women, looking like the spouse of Indra, and surrounded as it were by Apsarases, and situated on a highroad, where sacrifices were brought. Mahaushadha called the Brahman to the front, and told him to take away his wife if he recognised her. But when Virūpa saw Udumbarikā and the other women adorned with all their bravery, he stood still like a snake charmed by a spell. Like one unable to gaze at the light of day looked the Brahman at the women. Then he saw a female slave, a carrier of water, like unto a Piśāchī [or female demon] in appearance, standing at the back behind one of the king’s wives, and he seized her by the hand and said, “This is my wife.”
“If that be so, then take her away with you,” said Mahaushadha.
The Brahman took her and said, “The excellent loves the excellent, and the mediocre the mediocre; to the crooked one is my heart attached. O fair one, I am like unto a Piśācha, and you too are a Piśāchī. Come unto me, O Piśāchī. As I am like unto a Piśācha, we will take pleasure together.”
Therefore King Janaka forgave Mahaushadha all the faults which he had ever committed.
One day the king went into the park with his wives, and enjoyed himself there together with them. One of them took off a string of pearls worth a hundred thousand pieces of money and hung it on a spray of an aśoka tree. While sporting with the king she forgot about it and left it there. At midnight, after she had gone back to the palace with the king, she remembered that she had left her necklace in the forest. Meanwhile [[182]]it had been carried off to the top of a tree by a female monkey.
The king ordered his men to hasten to the forest and bring back the necklace. They went there, but they did not find it. Now a beggar had gone there in search of the remnants of the food of which other men had made a meal. As he came forth from the forest after partaking of such food, the king’s men arrested him. As no one else was to be seen there, they called on him to render up the necklace. Although he protested that he had not taken it, had not even seen it, yet he was beaten with fists and stakes, and then thrown into prison.
Tormented by hunger, he reflected that, unless he contrived some cunning way of escape, he would die there of starvation. So he said to the jailer that he had, it was true, taken the pearl necklace, but that he had given it to such and such a young merchant. Him also the king’s men summoned, and the two men were set fast connected by wooden fetters.