“Oh no, Bhadrā!” he replied, “but because I feared that this poisonous snake might bite you did I lift up your hand.”
“With what did you do so?” she asked.
“With the jewelled fly-flapper’s handle,” he replied.
“My lord,” she said, “better would it have been that the snake should have bitten me than that you should have touched me with the jewelled fly-flapper’s handle.”
“Why so?” he asked.
“As a fair tree clasped by the māluta creeper perishes,” she replied, “so do men go to ruin from a woman’s touch. Therefore is it better that one should be swiftly bitten by the snake of death than that the hand of a man should touch an honourable woman. In consequence of the contact of the king’s daughter’s body was the great ascetic Ṛishyaśringa long ago deprived of the power he had gained by penance. On the path of the storm-wind did he approach the king’s palace. He went back to the forest on foot.”
After the young couple had gone on living for some time in this fashion, the two old people died. Then the Brahman youth Nyagrodhaja thought, “So long as my parents were alive we had no cares, but now that they are dead we must manage the affairs of the household ourselves.” So he told Bhadrā that she must take heed to the indoor affairs, but that he would go and look after the fields.
Now when he regarded the work done afield, he saw how the nine hundred and ninety-nine pair of plough-oxen were tormented by small insects, how the oxen had [[200]]their nostrils bored through, their shoulders worn, their loins torn by the iron, and how the labourers, long-haired and long-bearded, attired in garments of hemp, had wales on their hands and feet, and, with bodies covered with dust, were like unto burnt-out tree-stumps, and how, looking like Piśāchas, they abused and struck one another for the sake of a plough or a ploughshare, on account of the use of the oxen or the goad. So he went up to them and asked them to whom they belonged. They replied that they were the labourers of the Brahman youth Nyagrodhaja. He asked by whom they had been taken into service. They replied that they had been engaged, not by him, but by his father, for the cultivation of his estate. Then said Nyagrodhaja to these labourers, “O sirs, if ye were engaged by Nyagrodhaja’s father for the cultivation of his estate, wherefore do ye labour with blows and abuse? If ye commit such misdeeds with your bodies and your speech, are ye not afraid of suffering in a round of long pains through the maturing of such conduct?”
Then Nyagrodhaja resolved that he, sinning neither with the body nor in speech or thought, would acquire merit. So when he had returned home, he said to Bhadrā, “O Bhadrā, manage the household with care.”
“O lord, what are you going to do?” she replied.