Story of the Second Brahman.

Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent at a public festival of the Brahmans, which had been proclaimed throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny for his trouble.  She heedlessly gave him a couple.  I asked him to give me one of them back, but he refused.  Upon that we quarrelled, and began to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering, in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also.  I thought this a fair way of settling the difference between us.  But my wife, hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make her escape by flight.  I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down, while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.[2] During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable, thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my penny should be given away for nothing.  When the barber had finished, I let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment, pouring down curses on me and the barber.  He took his departure, and meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.

The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on an ass, with her face turned towards the tail.  They came running to my dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the usual exhibition in the streets.  The report soon reached my father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair.  Seeing their poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured, being conscious that I was in the wrong.  They persisted, however, in taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.

This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid entertainment.  Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss.  But I was received with the hisses of six hundred Brahmans, who seized my person, and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.