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388
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1894.
The prince, who had not the slightest reason to connect himself with its origin, thought himself doubly insulted by the cutting remarks by the maid-servant. He would have rushed at her and plunged his dagger in her body, had not half a dozen friends near him held him back, fearing his attitude. He abused her, and several people had already rushed at her to push her away, when the old king restored order, and severely reprimanded Dêvî.
But she was glad at heart that unwittingly the matters had taken such a course.
"Let me be abused and thrashed," thought she. "I shall be proud of having brought this separation between the prince and his chaste wife the sooner to an end."
With this thought, she bowed very respectfully to the prince, and requested him to turn his mind back to the Simhala prince, and that she was not at all joking, but in earnest, when she said that he was the father of the beautiful baby. She even went out of her way, and remarked that in all the fourteen worlds there could not be found a better lady than the princess of Akhandakâvêri.
The prince's face changed colour when the name of the Simhala prince fell into his ears. "What? Is it possible! What connection is there with that company in Banaras and the baby's birth here? Let me enquire," thought he.
Dêvî was not that day permitted to return to the choultry. Immediately, the princess with her baby and the other maid-servants were sent for. The prince, overcome by extreme anger, had forgotten all his hard conditions, which he had imposed on his wife before he started for the sacred city: the raising of the Saiva temple and the giving birth to a son by his own self without his knowledge.
Ever obedient to orders issued by her lord or his father, Ambika, with her little baby at her bosom, arrived at the court like an ordinary woman without any reference to her position. But what did she, the gem of womankind, care for all the outward formalities? Her face, which bore on every line of it, furrows of deep anxiety and misery, indicated for all that her chaste innate character. Reaching the court she bowed with grace to her father-in-law and then to her lord. When questioned by the former as to who was the father of the baby, she replied:
"Respected father-in-law. Your noble son and my husband is its father. Let him kindly remember the Simhala prince, his friend, at Banâras, and the courtezan that visited him every night there. This is that courtezan, and the cause of all this is the imposition of two severe conditions, which your own son will explain to you, sire. If he is doubtful of the courtezan, let him please examine these ornaments, which he presented to me."
Here she placed before the old king all the jewels that her husband had given her in ber disguise as a courtezan. She then explained her whole story, from the beginning of her wedding night to that moment. All the people concerned in the affair were called and examined. The further the examination went the more the prince began to admire his chaste wife. What hardships, what renunciations she had undergone to please the whims of his own bad self? Even the Vijayanagara minister with his sovereign had to come in to give evidence, and on the former's saying that the princess he slept with for a night, as a pearl merchant, had a mole in her right cheek, the last lingering doubt in the minds of the most suspicious of men assembled there was removed. This on examination was proved to exist on the face of the maid-servant who had put on the disguise of the princess for a night. The examination was thorough and extremely minute, and before it was over there was not a single soul in the court, who did not condemn the prince for his bad treatment of his excellent wife, nor praise Ambikâ for all her successful adventures and noble execution of her undertakings for unsullied fame.
The prince was more than sufficiently pleased. He took back with pleasure his virtuous wife, and many were the occasions when they recounted their Banaras adventures. Once thus closely united by so many pleasant recollections and adventures they never became separated afterwards in their life. Ambika, by her purity of conduct, soundness of learning, and kindness to every one, became an object of respect to every person, and even to her husband. And they now lived together happily for a long time.
