Anangamanjari and Kamalakara

A wife, her beloved, and the husband she scorned all die of love in a single garden. Which of the three loved the most deeply? The answer is the one who was wronged.

Anangamanjari, unable to love the husband who adores her, falls for the brahman Kamalakara. When at last they meet, she dies of joy in his arms, he dies of grief beside her, and her returning husband Manivarman, finding her dead for another man, dies of sorrow rather than rage. Which of the three loved the most deeply? You judge first, then the king does.

The Burning Ground

For the last time that night, the king cut the corpse loose and carried it out onto the ash. The pattern no longer needs describing. The Vetala stirred and told its last tale of the night.

Three Hearts in Vishala

In the city of Vishala there lived a merchant named Arthadatta, whose daughter, Anangamanjari, was as lovely as a nymph of heaven. She was married to Manivarman, a merchant's son from a distant city, and her father kept the young couple in his own house. Manivarman adored his wife past all reason. But she could not love him; something in him she simply found distasteful, and no devotion of his could change it.

When the hot season came, Manivarman went home for a while to visit his parents. And in his absence, Anangamanjari, standing one day at her window, saw a young man pass in the street below. His name was Kamalakara, and he was the son of the king's own chaplain. In the space of a single look, each was lost to the other.

Her longing grew so fierce that she nearly took her own life, and it was her confidante Malatika who held her back, and who carried word gently between the two. Anangamanjari prayed to the goddess that if she could not have Kamalakara in this life, she might have him in the next. At last Malatika arranged for the two to meet in a garden, beneath a flowering mango bower.

When the moment came, Anangamanjari ran to him with her arms open, crying, where are you going? I have caught you. And in that very instant, from the sheer force of her joy, her heart gave way, and she died. Kamalakara, seeing the woman he loved fall dead at the moment of their meeting, was so broken that his own heart burst, and he died beside her.