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
prepared. The dog at once realised that, if the Brahmans who had been
invited to the memorial feast ate the poisoned grain, they would die,
and that the sin of Brahman murder would be incurred by the host,
her son. So she suddenly rushed up and put her foot right into the
middle of the milk-pudding. The son's wife was very angry. She threw
a red-hot coal at the dog with such skill that it dropped on to the
middle of her back and burnt a big hole in it. Then the son's wife
cooked a fresh milk-pudding and fed the Brahmans. But she was so
cross with the dog that she would not give her the smallest possible
scrap. So the poor dog remained hungry all day. When night fell she
went to the bullock who had been her husband and began to howl as
loudly as she could. The bullock asked her what the matter was. She
told him how she had seen that a snake had poisoned the grain, and
how, to prevent the Brahmans dying and her son incurring the sin of
their death, she had put her paw into the middle of the milk-pudding;
how her daughter-in-law had been angry and had burnt a hole in her
back with a live coal, and how her back hurt so that she did not know
what to do. The