Having come thus, she was in a party of dancing women. While there, the Princess said to the dancing women, “Take me, and go and dance at such and such a city.” She said this regarding the city to which the Princess came in dīga [marriage]. “While dancing there I shall faint. Then while I am there [in that state] you come away, having said, ‘We shall come again to call our child.’ ” She taught the women thus.
The Princess having taught them it, these women danced near the King, the father of the Prince who had placed her as though in prison when she came in dīga [marriage]. The Prince also is there.
While dancing thus, the Princess fainted. Afterwards, these women having said, “Let her stay until the time when we come back to call our child to go. We cannot now, while she is unconscious,” the women went away. The Princess remained there. That she was that Prince’s Princess he does not know. Having said that the Princess will still be in that very [prison] house, he places cooked rice [there for her] by means of the drain.
The women after three or four months came to call this Princess to go. Then that Prince having married her, she was with child. The women, notwithstanding that, called her and went away [with her].
Afterwards, when she was there a little time [with them] the Princess bore a Prince.
The Prince became considerably big. Afterwards he asked at the hand of the Princess, “Mother, where is my father?”
Then the Princess said, “Son, your father is such and such a King of such and such a city. The King having wagered that he will take me in marriage, said that he will inflict on me unimposed punishments. I said, ‘Having borne a Prince to you, I will employ the Prince and [get him to] tie you to your horse’s leg, and cause you to be struck fifty blows.’ ”
“In the way the King said, calling me [in marriage], when I came he punished me like the punishment of the prison. Having come from there by the help of two rats which I reared before, I was in the dancing women’s party. Being in it, and having gone to that city to dance with these women, the women came away while I was there. Afterwards they went back to come with me.
“During the time when I was there, the King marrying me, you were born when these women were going about. While I was there they came and called me. It is that King himself who is your father.”
After that, the Prince said, “Mother, if so, seek a few things for food for me, and give me them, for me to go to seek a livelihood for myself.”