delude the brahmin, the girl, standing there before all the people, exclaimed with fervour, "No man's hand but thine, brahmin, has ever touched me; and, by the truth of my asseveration I call on this fire to harm me not." So saying, she advanced to the burning pile,--when up dashed her paramour, who seized her by the hand, crying shame on the brahmin who could force so fair a maid to enter the flames! Shaking her hand free, the girl exclaimed to the brahmin that what she had asserted was now undone, and that she could not now brave the ordeal of fire. "Why not?" said the brahmin. "Because," she replied, "my asseveration was that no man's hand but thine had ever touched me; [295] and now here is a man who has seized hold of my hand!" But the brahmin, knowing that he was tricked, drove her from him with blows.

Such, we learn, is the wickedness of women. What crime will they not commit; and then, to deceive their husbands, what oaths will they not take--aye, in the light of day--that they did it not! So false-hearted are they! Therefore has it been said:--

A sex composed of wickedness and guile,
Unknowable; uncertain as the path
Of fishes in the water,--womankind
Hold truth for falsehood, falsehood for the truth!
As greedily as cows seek pastures new,
Women, unsated, yearn for mate on mate.
As sand unstable, cruel as the snake,
Women know all things; naught from them is hid!

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"Even so impossible is it to ward women," said the Master. His lesson ended, he preached the Truths, at the close whereof the passion-test Brother won the Fruit of the First Path. Also the Master showed the connexion and identified the Birth by saying:--"In these days I was the king of Benares."

[Note. The cuffing of the brahmin is the subject of a Bharhut sculpture, Plate 26, 8. For a parallel to the trick by which the girl avoids the ordeal of fire, see Folklore 3. 291.]

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