Here is a golden necklace, and emeralds and pearls,
Take all and welcome: give me place among thy servant girls.

When Sattuka had spoken the second stanza in accordance with his purpose, to wit--

Fair lady, lay thy jewels down and do not weep so sore
I'll kill thee: else I can't be sure thou'lt give me all thy store:--

Sulasa's wits rose to the occasion, and thinking, "This robber will not give me my life, but I'll take his life first by throwing him down the precipice in some way," she spoke the two stanzas:--

Within my years of sense, within my conscious memory,
No man on earth, I do protest, have I loved more than thee.

Come hither, for my last salute, receive my last embrace:
For never more upon the earth shall we meet face to face.

Sattuka could not see her purpose, so he said, "Very well, dear; come and embrace me." Sulasa walked round him in respectful salutation three times, kissed him, and saying, "Now, husband, I am going [438] to make obeisance to you on all four sides," she put her head on his foot, did obeisance at his sides, and went behind him as if to do obeisance there: then with the strength of an elephant she took him by the hinder parts and threw him head over heels down that place of destruction a hundred times as high as a man. He was crushed to pieces and died on the spot. Seeing this deed, the deity who lived on the mountain-top spoke these stanzas:--

Wisdom at times is not confined to men
A woman can chew wisdom now and then.

Wisdom at times is not confined to men:
Women are quick in counsel now and then.

How quick and keen she was the way to know,
She slew him like a deer with full-stretched bow.

He that to great occasion fails to rise
Falls, like that dull thief from the precipice.

One prompt a crisis in his fate to see,
Like her, is saved from threatening enemy.

So Sulasa killed the robber. When she descended from the mountain and came among her attendants, they asked where her husband was. "Don't ask me," she said, and mounting her chariot she went on to the city.

[439] After the lesson, the Master identified the Birth: "At that time the two then were the same two now, the deity was myself."

Footnotes

^261:1 Omitting na, with other MSS.

^261:2 See supra, p. 40.