CHAPTER XVI

The Rishi and the Brahman

Once upon a time there was a town called Atpat. In it there lived a
Brahman. For many years he lived happily and cultivated his fields of
rice and grain. But one day his wife gave up the observances imposed
on her, and, as a result, the whole house was stained by her conduct,
and pollution hung like a black cloud over it. Her husband should
have driven her out, but he had not the heart to do so. So he, too,
incurred the blame of his wife's sin. In course of time they died,
and, as a punishment for their wickedness, the husband became in his
next life a bullock, and the wife became a dog. But the gods so far
relented as to find them a home in the house of their only son.

Now the son was a very pious man, who never failed in his religious
rites. He worshipped the gods, gave memorial honours to his dead
father, and welcomed to his house every Brahman who passed by. One
year, on the anniversary of his father's death, he told his wife
to prepare a milk-pudding in honour of the dead, and announced that
he would invite Brahmans to partake of it. The wife was as pious as
her husband and never failed to obey his commands. So she made a big
milk-pudding, and she boiled vegetables and stewed fruits. But just as
she had finished and was about to invite her husband and his Brahman
guests to begin their feast, the dog saw that a snake had entered the
grain-jar, which had not been properly shut, and that it had left its
poisonous trail all over the grain from which the milk-pudding had been