“For money they laugh or weep; they win a man’s confidence but do not give him theirs.  Therefore a respectable man ought to keep bayaderes like flowers of a cemetery, three steps away from him.  It is also said:  changeable like waves of the sea, like clouds in a sunset, glowing only a moment—­so are women.  As soon as they have plundered a man they throw him away like a dye-rag that has been squeezed dry.  This saying, too, is pertinent:  just as no lotos grows on a mountain top, no mule draws a horse’s loud, no scattered barley grows up as rice; so no wanton ever becomes a respectable woman.”

Vasantasena, however, does become a respectable woman.  In the last scene the king confers on her a veil, whereby the stain on her birth and life is wiped away and she becomes Tscharudatta’s legitimate second wife.

But how about the first wife?  Her actions show how widely in India conjugal love may differ from what we know as such, by the absence of monopoly and jealousy.  When she first hears of the theft of Vasantasena’s jewels in her husband’s house she is greatly distressed at the impending loss of his good name, but is not in the least disturbed by the discovery that she has a rival.  On the contrary, she takes a string of pearls that remains from her dowry, and sends it to her husband to be given to Vasantasena as an equivalent for her lost jewels.  Vasantasena, on her part, is equally free from jealousy.  Without knowing whence they came, she afterward sends the pearls to her lover’s wife with these words addressed to her servants: 

“Take these pearls and give them to my sister, Tscharudatta’s wife, the honorable woman, and say to her:  ’Conquered by Tscharudatta’s excellence, I have become also your slave.  Therefore use this string of pearls as a necklace.’”

The wife returned the pearls with the message: 

“My master and husband has made you a present of these pearls.  It would therefore be improper for me to accept them:  my master and husband is my special jewel.  This I beg you to consider.”

And, in the final scenes, the wife shows her great love for her husband by hastening to get ready for the funeral pyre to be burnt alive with his corpse.  And when, after expressing her joy at his rescue and kissing him, she turns and sees Vasantasena, she exclaims:  “O this happiness!  How do you do, my sister?” Vasantasena replies:  “Now I am happy,” and the two embrace!

The translator of Cudraka’s play notes in the preface that there is a curious lack of ardor in the expression of Tscharudatta’s love for Vasantasena, and he naively—­though quite in the Hindoo spirit—­explains this as showing that this superior person (who is a model of altruistic self-sacrifice in every respect), “remains untouched by coarse outbursts of sensual passion.”  The only time he warms up is when he hears that the bayaderes prefers him to her wealthy persecutor; he then exclaims,