The Parrot and the Mynah
A wise parrot and a wise mynah each tell a tale to prove which sex is the more treacherous. The Betaal asks the king to settle it, and the wisest answer is to refuse the question.
Two wise birds quarrel over which sex is worse. The parrot tells of a wife who betrayed her innocent husband; the mynah tells of a husband who murdered his trusting wife. Both crimes are the same. When the Betaal demands to know which is worse, men or women, Vikramaditya refuses the frame itself. You judge first, then the king does.
The Burning Ground
Once more the corpse hung waiting in the branches, and once more the king brought it down onto his shoulders. The Vetala settled behind his ear and told a tale of two birds and an old, dangerous argument.
The Parrot and the Mynah
A king once kept a parrot named Vidagdhachudamani, so wise that he knew all the sacred books, for he was a celestial being living out a curse in the body of a bird. In time a wise mynah named Somika came to the same court, and she too was a cursed celestial, as sharp and learned as the parrot.
The two birds fell to quarreling, as the clever will. The parrot said that women are cruel and false. The mynah said that men are wicked and ungrateful. Neither would yield, and so they agreed to settle it with a story apiece, and let the court decide.
The parrot told his tale first, to prove women false. There was a merchant's wife named Vasudatta, whose husband was a good man. While he was away, she took a secret lover. When misfortune fell and the lover died, her grief turned to cunning: to hide her own guilt, she disfigured herself and then accused her innocent, sleeping husband of the injury. He was seized and dragged toward execution for a crime he had never even known of, and only a witness who had seen the whole truth saved his life at the last. The treachery, from first to last, was hers.
Then the mynah told her tale, to prove men false. There was a merchant's son named Dhanadatta who gambled away his fortune, and then married a good woman named Ratnavali for the wealth she brought. Taking her on a journey, he robbed her of her jewels and threw her into a ravine to die. But she survived, and made her way home. And when this same husband came back to her, ruined again, she took him in without a word of reproach and cared for him. He lived on her kindness. And then one night, as she slept trusting in his arms, he killed her for her ornaments, and vanished. The treachery, from first to last, was his.