The Battle of Sexes: The Scholar Parrot & The Wise Myna

Without a flicker of fatigue, Emperor Vikramaditya returned to the howling cemetery, climbed the blackened Shinshapa tree, and pulled the spectral corpse onto his broad shoulders once more. Betal whispered: 'Listen, O King! To pass this grim midnight journey, hear the famous tale of the Scholar Parrot and the Wise Myna of Pataliputra!'

In the royal aviary of Pataliputra lived two cursed celestial beings in avian form: the scholar emerald parrot Vidagdhachudamani (master of all Shastras) and the wise golden-beaked myna Somika (master of all sciences). Living in the same golden cage, the parrot proposed love. The myna scoffed: 'I will never associate with males—men are ungrateful, deceitful, and wicked!'

The dispute deepened into a binding wager before the Crown Prince: whoever failed to prove their claim through an authentic witness of life would become the lifelong slave of the victor!

The myna began her testimony: 'In the great trading capital of Kamandika lived Arthadatta, a merchant of supreme aristocratic lineage. His son Dhanadatta grew up in immense luxury and noble prestige.'

After his father's passing, rogue companions lured Dhanadatta into reckless gambling. Within months, he lost every chest of ancestral gold on the dice table, fleeing into foreign lands in poverty and shame!

Wandering penniless, he reached the prosperous trading town of Chandanpur, where the wealthy merchant Dharmadatta was deeply impressed by his refined speech and aristocratic lineage.

Believing him to be a prosperous gentleman of high birth, Dharmadatta wedded his virtuous and radiant daughter Ratnavati to him, showering the couple with chests of gold and jewelry.

Taking Ratnavati and all her bridal dowry, Dhanadatta set out for his hometown. Along the way, they entered a desolate, precipitous mountain canyon.

Consumed by vile greed, Dhanadatta shoved his devoted bride off the cliff edge into the deep rocky chasm, seized all her gold ornaments, and fled!

Miraculously, Ratnavati's garments caught on mountain roots and thorny shrubs along the cliff wall, sparing her life as she hauled herself out of the abyss.

When passing caravans questioned her wounds, she protected her treacherous husband: 'Bandits attacked our party; my husband fled to seek help!'

She returned to her father's estate in Chandanpur, living as a devoted, chaste wife awaiting her husband's return without a word of anger.

Years later, having lost all the stolen wealth on dice again, Dhanadatta returned as a ragged beggar. Seeing him, Ratnavati embraced him with pure forgiveness!

Yet Dhanadatta's wicked nature was irredeemable! At midnight, he stole her remaining gold, attempted to strangle her in her sleep, and fled! The myna cried: 'Behold man's ungrateful treachery!'

The scholar parrot countered: 'In Harshavati lived the noble, devout merchant Samudradatta. His wife Vasudatta feigned piety, yet harbored a treacherous and adulterous heart!'

Vasudatta engaged in an illicit affair with a reckless rogue youth of the city, sneaking out into the shadows while her husband slept.

One midnight, she entered the royal pleasure garden for a rendezvous. Hidden high in the branches of a banyan tree, an observant thief watched her.

Reaching the tree, she was horrified to discover that city watchmen had apprehended her lover earlier that evening and hanged his dead corpse from the bough!

Mad with grief, Vasudatta pulled down the corpse to kiss its cold lips. Suddenly, a ghoul spirit inside the corpse snapped its jaws and BIT OFF HER NOSE in the moonlight!

Running home, she wailed hysterically: 'My drunken husband woke up and severed my nose while I slept!' The enraged King condemned her innocent husband to be executed on the spot!

The bewildered, innocent husband was dragged in heavy chains to the execution block, pleading for divine justice.

At the execution block, the watching thief stepped forward: 'Hold, my King! Search the hanged corpse in the royal garden—her severed nose remains locked between its jaws!'

The King verified the truth, liberated the innocent husband, banished the treacherous woman from the realm, and appointed the honest thief as City Magistrate! The parrot cried: 'Behold woman's deceit!'

Pausing his narrative amidst the midnight fog, Betal leaned into Vikramaditya's ear with the profound question of human conduct.

Emperor Vikramaditya declared: 'Virtue and vice belong not to gender, but to the moral conduct of the individual soul! However, a man's wickedness is often born of transient vice like greed and gambling; but a treacherous woman who weaponizes false innocence to send her innocent protector to the execution block commits a far more destructive hypocrisy!'

Alone under the ink-black sky of the moonless night, Emperor Vikramaditya turned back into the haunted forest, fearless and determined to capture the spirit once more.