Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 504

464
A FORCED SALE
" I
should advise you to give her up to me," he said.
and
bullocks,
my
best
of
of
one
back
on
the
will put her
will take her away with me, thus saving her from certain
You will, it is true, lose her but it is nevertheless
death.
far better that you should lose her with the satisfaction of
having saved her life than that you should incur the
As for her jewels, they
suspicion of having killed her.
cannot be worth more than twenty pagodas. See, here
are twenty-five for them, and you shall give me your
The arguments of the man seemed to me quite
wife."
unanswerable. I therefore took the money which he
offered me, while he, lifting my wife in his arms, placed
her on one of his bullocks, and made haste to continue his
I also continued mine, and reached home rather
journey.
late, my feet all blistered by the hot sand over which 1 had
" Where is thy wife ? " my
to walk the whole way.
mother asked me, surprised to see me return alone. There-
upon I related to her all that had happened since I had left
home, and finally told her of the sad accident that had
happened to my youthful spouse, and how I had given
her away to a passing merchant, rather than be a witness
of her death, and be suspected moreover of having been
At the same time I showed my mother
the cause of it.
the twenty- five pagodas that I had received from the
merchant as compensation.
Filled with rage at what I had told her, my mother was
utterly speechless for a while as if turned into stone. Then
her suppressed feelings of indignation got the better of
her, and she gave vent to the most violent imprecations
"
and curses at my conduct. " Thou fool, thou wretch
"
wife,
thy
done
Sold
hast
thou
what
she,
exclaimed
A Brah-
hast thou ? Delivered her up to another man
min wife become the concubine of a low-caste merchant
What will people think of it ? What will her relatives and
Is it
ours say when they learn this disgraceful story ?
possible to imagine a more egregious instance of folly and
The sad occurrence which had happened to
stupidity 1 "
my wife soon reached the ears of her relatives, who hastened
to my village, filled with rage and indignation, and fully
And they certainly would
resolved to beat me to death.
have murdered both me and my innocent mother had we
I
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