perfect happiness.

CHAPTER XX

The Golden Temple

Once upon a time there was a town called Atpat. In it there reigned a
king who had four daughters-in-law. He loved three of them very dearly,
but the fourth, who was an ugly little girl, he did not like at all. To
the three daughters-in-law he gave nice food and fine clothes. But
to the ugly little daughter-in-law he gave nothing but scraps from
his table and thick, coarse clothes to wear. He would not even let her
sleep inside the house, but made her sleep in the stable and look after
the cows. The poor ugly daughter-in-law grew so unhappy that, when the
first Monday in Shravan [26] came, she ran out of the palace, and out
of the town, and then away as fast as her fat little legs would carry
her. At last she went and hid herself in the woods. Now it so happened
that that very day a band of serpent-maidens [27] had come up from
Patala. After wandering through the forest and bathing in the running
streams, they had joined a bevy of wood-nymphs and were coming in her
direction. At first she was too terrified to say a single word. But at
last she asked, "Ladies, ladies, where are you going?" "To the temple
of Shiva," they replied, "to worship the god. For by doing that, one
wins the love of one's husband, one obtains children, and one comes by
the wish of one's heart." When the ugly daughter-in-law heard that by
doing what the serpent-maidens and the wood-nymphs were about to do
she could win love for herself, she at once thought that in this way
she, too, might win the love of her father-in-law. So she told the
serpent-maidens of Patala and the wood-nymphs that she would go with
them. They went deeper and deeper into the forest until at last they
came to a temple of the god Shiva. There the serpent-maidens and the
wood-nymphs offered to the god rice, betel-nut, incense, flowers, and
the leaves of the bel tree. The ugly little daughter-in-law did just
as they did. And when she had finished she cried out, "O God Shiva,
please, please vouchsafe my prayer also, and make my father-in-law
and my mother-in-law, my brothers-in-law and my sisters-in-law like
me as much as they now dislike me." That evening she went home and
fasted, and all the scraps which they threw to her from the king's
table she gave to her favourite cow. And then she sat by herself and
prayed to the god Shiva. The following Monday she once more ran out of
the palace and out of the town and into the wo