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The Value of Purity
Heeding his mother's advice, the thief did not torture Bhatta again, but instead sold her to a trader for a considerable sum. The trader, enraged by her refusal to succumb to his immoral advances, started torturing her. Everyday he would take from her body a little bit more of her blood, and with it, her strength, her anger, and her pride.
After some time, Bhatta's brother, in search of his feared but beloved sister, arrived in the city where she was being held captive by the trader. Seeing a girl with the similar features of his sister on the street, he followed her to the trader's house and, explaining that she reminded him of someone, asked the trader about her background and her relation to the trader. Unable to receive a satisfactory reply, the brother specified his questions and recognized the answers as lies. Then being sure that the woman he saw was his sister and that she was not being treated well by that dangerous man, 'Bhatta's brother offered the trader enough money to get him to confess the truth and sell Bhatta to her brother. Once home, her brother bought Bhatta new clothes and helped her to recuperate. When Subudhi learned of Bhatta's rescue and recovery, he was overjoyed. He brought her back home with all honour.
But this was not the same woman that had stormed into the night not so long ago. Washed of all excesses of emotions such as pride and anger, Bhatta was patient and polite, even gentle, and above all grateful for saving her life from an awful situation among cruel and violent criminals. Her transformation hardly passed unnoticed; news of her respectfulness and inexhaustible virtue reached beyond the household and even beyond the town.
