They told him that he might do this if he were quick about it:  he promised to hurry, and set to his cooking:  he put sufficient rice into the pot to feed them all and when it was ready he offered some to each of the messengers.  They consulted together as to whether they should eat it, but their appetites got the better of their caution and they agreed to do so, and made a good meal.  But directly they had finished they began to debate what they should do; they had eaten his rice and could no longer compass his death.

So they told him frankly that Chando had sent them to call him; he was to die that night and they were to take away his spirit; but they had made the mistake of eating at his hands and although they must take him away, they would give him advice as to how he might save his life:  he was to take a thin piece of lamp-wick and when Chando questioned him, he was to put it up his nose and make himself sneeze.  The prince promised to remember this, and that night they took his spirit away to Chando, but when Chando began to question him he made himself sneeze with the lamp-wick; thereupon Chando at once wrote that he should live for sixty years more and ordered the messengers to immediately restore his spirit to its body.  Then the prince hastened back to his father and mother, and told them that he had broken through his fate and had a long life before him; and they had better make arrangements for his marriage at once.  This they did and he lived to a ripe old age, as he had been promised.

CV.  The Messengers of Death.

There was once a Brahman who had four sons born to him, but they all died young; a fifth son however was born to him, who grew up to boyhood.  But it was fated that he too should die before reaching manhood.  One day while his father was away from home, the messengers of death came to take him away.  The Brahman’s wife thought that they were three friends or relations of her husband, who had come to pay a visit, and gave them a hearty welcome.  And when she asked who they were, they also told her that they were connections of her husband.  Then she asked them to have some dinner and they said that they would eat, provided that she used no salt in the cooking.  She promised not to do, but what she did was to scatter some salt over the bottom of the dish.  Then she cooked the rice and turned it into the dish and gave it to them to eat.  They ate but when they came to the bottom of the dish they tasted the salt which had been underneath.  Then the three messengers said “She has got the better of us; we have eaten her salt and can no longer deceive her; we must tell her why we have come.”