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for him I am come here to carry you off, so come along, before your father does you an injury." Thereupon she consented joyfully, and be removed her bonds. Then he went out with her, who at once committed herself to his care, by the underground passage he had made, and returned to his own house.
And next morning the king heard that his own daughter had been carried off by some one, who had dug a secret mine, and that king thought to himself, " Undoubtedly that wicked man whom I punished has some audacious friend, who has carried off my daughter in this way." So he set his servants to watch the body of Karpara, and he said to them. " You must arrest any one who may come here lamenting, to burn the corpse and perform the other rites, and so I shall recover that wicked girl who has disgraced her family." When those guards had received this order from the king, they said, " We will do so," and remained continually watching the corpse of Karpara.
Then Ghata made enquiries, and found out what was going on, and said to the princess; " My dear, my comrade Karpara was a very dear friend to me, and by means of him I gained you and all these valuable jewels; so until I have paid to him the debt of friendship, I cannot rest in peace. So I will go and see his corpse, and by a device of mine manage to lament over it, and I will in due course burn the body, and scatter the bones in a holy place. And do not be afraid, I am not reckless like Karpara." After he had said this to her, he immediately assumed the appearance of a Páśupata ascetic, and taking boiled rice and milk in a pot, he went near the corpse of Karpara, as if he were a person passing that way casually, and when he got near it, he slipped, and let fall from his hand and broke that pot of milk and rice, and began lamenting, " O Karpara full of sweetness,"*[1] and so on. And the guards thought that he was grieving for his pot full of food, that he had got by begging. And immediately he went home and told that to the princess. And the next day he made a servant, dressed as a bride, go in front of him, and he had another behind him, carrying a vessel full of sweetmeats, in which the juice of the Dhattúra had been infused. And he himself assumed the appearance of a drunken villager, and so in the evening he came reeling along past those guards, who were watching the body of Karpara. They said to him, " Who are you, friend, and who is this lady, and where are you going?" Then the cunning fellow answered them with stuttering accents, " I am a villager; this is my wife; I am going
- ↑ * Of course Karpara is the Sanskrit for pot. In fact the two friends' names might be represented in English by Pitcher and Pott. In modern Hindu funerals boiled rice is given to the dead. So I am informed by my friend Pandit Syáma Charan Mukhopá dhyáyá, to whom I am indebted for many kind hints.
