Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c9.3878

c9.3878

On another occasion the King saw his wife looking at a Brahmin guest through the window. He got angry and ordered that Brahmin to be killed. When that Brahmin was being taken to the scaffold, a dead fish, placed for sale, laughed loud. The king asked Vararuci for its reason. Saying that he had to consider about it before giving a reply, he went out and meditated upon Sarasvati. Devi appeared and told him. “If you climb up to the top of this palm tree and sit there to night you will understand why the dead fish laughed.” Vararuci did as he was told. A fierce giantess came there with her young ones. The children began to ask her for food. The giantess told them that they would get the flesh of a Brahmin next day, and that he was not killed that day because the dead fish had laughed. The young ones asked her why the dead fish laughed. The giantess said “The wives of the kings are not chaste. In all harems men live in the guise of women. Without stopping this the king was going to kill an innocent Brahmin. That is why the dead fish laughed.”