The Magic Pill

One man marries a princess in secret, by stealth and a false face; another is openly given her before the sacred fire. Both call her wife. Whose is she?

With a magician's shape-changing pill, the brahman Manahsvamin disguises himself, slips unseen into a princess's chambers, and marries her in secret. Through the same tangle of tricks, the king later gives the princess openly, before the fire, to another man, Shashin. Two husbands, two claims. To which of them does she truly belong? You judge first, then the king does.

The Burning Ground

Back to the tree the corpse had flown, and once more the king climbed to bring it down. He settled it on his shoulder and walked on. The Vetala took its place behind his ear and told a tale of a marvel, and the tangle it left behind.

The Pill, the Secret, and the Fire

In the city of Shivapura there was a king named Yashahketu, whose daughter was the princess Shashiprabha. At a spring festival, a young brahman named Manahsvamin saved her from a rampaging elephant, and in that moment the two of them fell in love. But she was a princess, kept far from any young brahman, and he had no way to reach her.

Now there lived in that land a famous trickster and magician named Muladeva, who owned a wonderful pill: held in the mouth, it changed a person's face and form into whatever shape was wished. With Muladeva's help and this pill, Manahsvamin put on a face that was not his own, and slipped, unseen and unrecognised, into the princess's chambers. There, in secret, the two were married by the gandharva rite, the marriage of lovers, with no witness at all and no one's knowledge but their own.

The magician's schemes tangled on from there, as such schemes do. Muladeva himself, disguised now as an aged and formidable brahman, came before King Yashahketu and demanded a bride for his own side, a girl to be given as daughter-in-law to his household. The king, afraid to refuse so powerful an ascetic and draw his curse down upon the kingdom, gave his own daughter. And so Shashiprabha was married a second time, openly and in due form, before the sacred fire and the whole gathered court, to a companion of the magician named Shashin.