402 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Brahmanhood of my terrible majesty, and of my holy study. Harishchandra promises an additional gift, and Vishvamitra allows him the remaining quarter of the day for its liquidation. On the terrified and afflicted prince offering himself for sale, in order to gain the mean of meeting this cruel demand, Dharma (Righteousness) appears in the form of a hideous and offensive Chandala, and agrees to buy him at his own price, large or small. Harishchandra declines such a degrading servitude, and declares that he would rather be consumed by the fire of his persecutor’s curse than submit to such a fate. Vishvamitra however again comes on the scene, asks why he does not accept the large sum offered by the Chandala; and, when he pleads in excuse his descent from the solar race, threatens to fulminate a curse against him if he does not accept that method of meeting his liability. Harishchandra implores that he may be spared this extreme of degradation, and offers to become Vishvamitra’s slave in payment of the residue of his debt; whereupon the sage rejoins, “If thou art my slave, then I sell thee as such to the Chandala for a hundred millions of money.”
“The Chandala, delighted, pays down the money, and carries off Harishchandra, bound beaten, confused and afflicted, to his own place of abode. Harishchandra is sent by the Chandala to steal grave clothes in a cemetary and is told that he will receive two-sixths goind to his masters, and one-sixth to the King. In this horrid spot, and in this degrading occupation, he spent in great misery, twelve months, which seemed to him like a hundred years. He then falls asleep and has a series of dreams suggested by the life he had been leading. After he awoke, his wife came to the cemetary to perform the obsequies of their son, who had died from the bite of a serpent. At first the husband and wife did not recognize each other, from the change in appearance which had been brought upon them by their miseries. Harishchandra however, soon discovered from the tenor of her lamentations that it is his wife, and falls into a swoon; as the queen does also when she recognizes her husband. When consciousness returns, they both break out into lamentations, the father bewailing in a touching strain the loss of his son, and the wife the degradation of the King. She then falls on his neck, embraces him, and asks “whether all this is a dream, or a reality, as she is utterly be wildered”, and adds, that “if it be a reality, then righteousness is unvailing to those who practise it.” After hesitating to devote himself to death on his son’s funeral pyre without receiving his master’s leave, Harishchandra resolves to do so, braving all the consequences, and consoling himself with the hopeful