The three Vaeddās went to the place where the bride is. That they had shot the cobra no one in the bride’s party knows. Thereupon, when they tried to call the bride and go away, the Vaeddās did not allow them to call her and go. [They said], “If this cobra having bitten her she had died, where would there be a bride for you?”
Both the parties instituted law-suits. Both the parties having gone near the King told him to decide the law-suit. The King having heard the law-suit, after he had looked [into the matter] was also unable to decide it. At that time he asked the Vaeddās, “To whom must this woman belong?”
Thereupon the Vaeddās said, “To both parties she cannot belong. She must belong to our teacher.”
Should you say, “Did they say who that was?” it was indeed that woman who at first took the water.
North-western Province.
In Folk-Tales of Hindustan (Shaik Chilli), p. 83, a Prince while travelling met with an archer who had shot an arrow at a star fourteen years before and was awaiting its fall. He saw its approach when it was still a thousand miles away, and warned the Prince to avoid it.
In Old Deccan Days (M. Frere), p. 297, the chief amusement of a rich man was shooting his arrow every morning through one of the pearls of his wife’s nose-ring. When her brother came to take her to visit her parents, he found her thin and miserable, as she feared the arrow might some day strike her face. Each day the husband asked her, “Was there ever a man as clever as I am?” and she replied that there never was one. Her brother advised her to say next time that there were many men in the world cleverer than he was. When she said this her husband left her in order to find one of them. He met a clever wrestler and a clever pandit, who joined him, and who frightened some demons that were going to eat them.