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in a similar way. On the next day the ascetic went with her disciple to the house of Devasmitá, much delighted at having accomplished what she undertook to do. Then Devasmitá received her courteously, and made her drink wine drugged with Datura, offered as a sign of gratitude. When she and her disciple were intoxicated with it, that chaste wife cut off their ears and noses, arid flung them also into a filthy pool. Arid being distressed by the thought that perhaps these young merchants might go and slay her husband, she told the whole circumstance to her mother-in-law. Then her mother-in-law said to her,— " My daughter, you have acted nobly, but possibly some misfortune may happen to my son in consequence of what you have done." Then Devasmitá said— I will deliver him even as S'aktimatí in old time delivered her husband by her wisdom. Her mother-in-law asked; "How did S'aktimatí deliver her husband? tell me, my daughter." Then Devasmitá related the following story:
Story of S'aktimati:-In our country, within the city, there is the shrine of a powerful Yaksha named Manibhadra, established by our ancestors. The people there come and make petitions at this shrine, offering various gifts, in order to obtain various blessings. Whenever a man is found at night with another man's wife, he is placed with her within the inner chamber of the Yaksha's temple. And in the morning he is taken away from thence with the woman to the king's court, and his behaviour being made known, he is punished; such is the custom. Once on a time in that city a merchant, of the name of Samudradatta, was found by a city-guard in the company of another man's wife. So he took him and placed him with the woman in that temple of the Yaksha, fastening the door firmly. And immediately the wise and devoted wife of that merchant, whose name was S'aktimatí, came to hear of the occurrence; then that resolute woman, disguising herself, went confidently at night to the temple of the Yaksha, accompanied by her friends, taking with her offerings for the god. When she arrived there, the priest whose business it was to eat the offerings, through desire for a fee, opened the door and let her enter, informing the magistrate of what he had done. And she, when she got inside, saw her husband looking sheepish, with a woman, and she made the woman put on her own dress, and told her to go out. So that woman went out in her dress by night, and got off, but S'aktimati remained in the temple -with her husband. And when the king's officers came in the morning to examine the merchant, he was seen by all to be in the company of his own wife.*[1] When he heard
- ↑ * A precisely similar story occurs in the Bahár Dánish. The turn of the chief incident, although not the same, is similar to that of Nov VII. Part 4 of Bandello's Novelle, or the Accorto Avvedimento di una Fantesca à liberare In padrona e l'iunamorato
