Beautiful Unmadini

A king refuses another man's wife though she is offered to him freely, and dies of the longing. Who stood higher: the king, or the loyal general?

A merchant's daughter of matchless beauty is kept from the king by a protective lie, and married instead to his commander. When the king later sees her and is consumed by longing, the general offers her freely, and the king refuses rather than take another man's wife, and dies of it. The general follows him into the fire. Which of the two stood higher in virtue? You judge first, then the king does.

The Burning Ground

Back the corpse went to its branch, and back the king climbed after it. Bound, shouldered, carried once more across the ash: the pattern was old now, and Vikramaditya kept his patience. The Vetala waited until the grey was underfoot again, and then it began.

Unmadini

In a city called Kanakapura on the bank of the Ganga there ruled a king named Yashodhana, and in that city lived a merchant whose daughter was named Unmadini. Her beauty was of a kind the world rarely makes; it was said she could unsettle the mind of the god of love himself.

When she came of age, her father went first, as was proper, to the king, and offered her as a bride. Yashodhana sent learned men to look at her and read the marks of her body, as kings did before a marriage. But when those men saw her, a fear took hold of them. A beauty like this, they thought, will swallow the king whole; he will forget his kingdom and his duty, and the realm will fall. So, meaning to protect him, they told the king a lie: her marks are inauspicious, do not take her. And the king, trusting them, refused the match.

So the merchant gave his daughter instead to Baladhara, the commander of the king's army, and she became the general's wife.

Unmadini had not forgotten the slight. One day, at the spring festival, as the king was passing below, she let herself be seen on the rooftop of her husband's house. Yashodhana looked up, and saw her, and swooned where he stood. When he learned that this was the very maiden he had once been told to refuse, something came loose in him that he could not put back.