The Carpenter's Wife

Panchtantra Stories

Once there was a carpenter who kept hearing bad rumours about his wife, and wanted to know if they were true. Next day, pretending he was going to the village nearby, he told his wife, "I have to leave the place early morning tomorrow for a village not far away from here. I may have to stay there for a few days. Please get things ready for my travel."  The wife’s joy knew no bounds. She cooked his favourite dishes and packed some of it for his travel.  Next morning the carpenter left. His wife put on her best clothes, daubed perfume on her body and thrust flowers in her hair and spent the rest of the day with great difficulty.  When it was dusk, she went to her lover’s house and told him, "My wicked husband has left for some place and will not come back for a few days. So, come to my place after every one has gone to sleep and we will have a happy time."  After this invitation, she returned home.  Meanwhile, the carpenter spent the day in a nearby forest and came back before his wife had returned from her lover’s place. He hid himself under a cot. Soon, his wife’s lover came and joined her. As the wife was talking to her lover on the bed, her dangling legs hit something hard. She at once thought it could be her husband hiding under the bed to test her.  "I will show my husband how clever I am," she thought.  When her lover moved close to her, she told him through signs that her husband was under the bed and said, "Sir, you should not touch me. I am a very faithful wife. If you touch me I will turn you into ash."  "In that case, why did you invite me," he asked her angrily.  "Please listen, this morning, I went to the temple of the goddess where I heard a divine voice saying, "O woman, I know you are my devotee. But you will become a widow in six months."  Then I prayed her to tell me a way by which I could save my husband and make him live for hundred years.  "There is a way which is in your hands," the goddess told me.  "If that is so, I would give my life to save my husband", I told the goddess.  She told me, "If you go to bed with a stranger, the danger to your husband’s life will shift to the stranger who will die soon."  The foolish carpenter believed every word of his wife and happy that he had such a faithful wife, he came out of his hiding and told her, "O sacred woman, I paid heed to rumours about you and doubted your character. I wanted to test you and put you on the wrong track making you believe I had left the village. Now I have seen what you are. Come, let us enjoy," he said and embraced her. In that happiness he carried his wife and the carpenter on his shoulders and paraded the streets of the village.  At this stage Raktamukha, the monkey, told Karalamukha, the croc, "O wicked croc, I now know your evil thoughts. How can I come to your place? It is your nature to be wicked. Friendship with good men will not change your nature. You are too attached to your woman. You are her slave. Such people never hesitate to lose their wealth and friends for her sake."  As the monkey was telling this story of the carpenter to the croc, someone from the sea came and told the croc that his wife who was fasting had died. The croc felt that living in a house without a wife was like living in a jungle.  He told the monkey, "Friend, pardon me. I have done you harm. So, I have lost my wife. I deserve to die." The monkey said, "I know you are a hen-pecked husband. But this is no time for grief because you are rid of a greedy wife. You must celebrate." The elders have said:  "Consider that evil woman Who has no character and Who always quarrels with you As a curse in the form of a wife.That man who wants to be happy Should not even take her name. He who loves a woman of vice Perishes like a moth kissing fire." The croc said in grief, "My friend, I have lost your friendship and also my wife. All this is the result of betraying a friend like you. I think I am wise. But it is like the wisdom of the foolish woman who lost her lover and her husband also."  "How is it?" asked the monkey.