THE SHUDRAS : BRAHMINS VERSUS SHUDRAS 143
Vishvamitra returns, and after recalling Harishchandra to consciousness by sprinkling water over him, again urges payment of the present. The king, again swoons, and is again restored. The sage threatens to curse him if his engagement is not fulfilled by sunset. Being now pressed by his wife, the king agrees to sell her, adding, however, ‘If my voice can utter such a wicked word, I do what the most inhuman wretches cannot perpetrate.’ He then goes into the city, and in self-accusing language offers his queen for sale as a slave. A rich old Brahmin offers to buy her at a price corresponding to her value, to do his household work. Seeing his mother dragged away the child ran after her, his eyes dimmed with tears, and crying ‘mother.’ The Brahmin purchaser kicked him when he came up; but he would not let his mother go, and continued crying ‘mother, mother.’ The queen then said to the Brahmin, ‘Be so kind, my master, as to buy also this child, as without him I shall prove to thee but a useless purchase. Be thus merciful to me in my wretchedness, unite me with my son, like a cow to her calf.’ The Brahmin agrees: ‘Take this money and give me the boy.’ After the Brahmin had gone out of sight with his purchases. Vishvamitra again appeared and renewed his demands: and when the afflicted Harishchandra offered him the small sum he had obtained by the sale of his wife and son, he angrily replied, ‘If, miserable Kshatriya, thou thinkest this a sacrificial gift befitting my deserts, thou shalt soon behold the transcendent power of my ardent austrerefervour 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 means 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 survitude, 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 docs 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 docs 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 cemetery and is told that he will receive two-sixths of the value for his hire; three-sixths going to his master, 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 cemetery 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 wrought upon them both 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 docs also when she recognizes her husband. When consciousness returns they both break