The Faithless Princess
In a certain country there is a Prince, it is said. The Prince, saying that women are faithless, does not marry.
The God Śakra having ascertained this, came in the appearance of a man, and asked at the hand of the Prince whether if he created a Princess out of his own very body, and gave her to him, he would be willing to take her in marriage. The Prince said, “It is good.”
Afterwards the God Śakra created a Princess from the Prince’s body, and gave her to him.
When the Prince and Princess, having got married, had been living together for a very long time, the Princess associated with a Nāgayā.[1] When they had been thus for a long time, the Princess and the Nāgayā spoke together as to how to kill the Princess’s Prince. Then the Nāgayā said, “Ask at the hand of the Prince where the Prince’s death is. After you have got to know the place where his death is, I will bite[2] him there.”
After that, the Princess asked at the hand of the Prince, “Where is your death?” The Prince did not tell her. Every day the Princess was asking it. On a certain day the Prince said, “To-day my death is in my thumb.”
Then the Princess told the Nāgayā, “He said that his death is in his thumb.”
So the Nāgayā went [in his snake form, as a cobra], and stopped on the path on which the Prince was going for his bath, in order to bite[2] him.
Afterwards, the Prince’s people went first; the Prince went in the middle. Then the people who went first saw the Nāgayā, and killed it.
Afterwards, the people and the Prince having returned from bathing, the Prince told at the hand of the Princess, “As we were going to bathe to-day a cobra was on the path; my people killed it.” The Princess, clasping her hands with grief, asked, “Where was it?” The Prince told her of the place where the cobra was staying, and she knew that it was the Nāgayā.