ENTERING ANOTHER'S BODY. H 



heads of the two disputants with wreaths ; iVIandan Alisr's wreath 

 faded first, and Cariikara declares that he has conquered, and that 

 Mandan Misr must become his disciple. But the wife remonstrates, 

 on the plea that her husband is only half, she herself being the other 

 half : he must conquer her also. She enters into a disputation wath 

 him particularly on the Art of Love (Ras-Schaster), in which he, 

 a Brahmacarin, is quite inexperienced. In order not to have an 

 undue advantage she gives him a month's time for preparation. 

 Cariikara enters the body of a king who has just died, committing 

 his body to the care of his disciples. In the time of a single month 

 Carhkara gathers a fund of experience in the art sufficient to down 

 the woman in her own domain. 



A Buddhist novice kills a serpent in order to enter its body, ac- 

 cording to Burnouf , " Introduction a I'histoire du Buddhisme," I. 

 331, and Stan. lulien, " Alemoires," I. 48; see Benfey, Das Pan- 

 catantra, I. 124. 



F. \V. Bain, "A Digit of the ^loon," pp. 84 fl:., tells the follow- 

 ing, presumably spurious, story, based upon sundry echoes from 

 Hindu fiction : A king's domestic chaplain (purohita) is smitten with 

 an evil passion for another man's wife. He gets the husband 

 interested in the art of entering another's body, takes him one 

 night to the cemetery, and there each by the power of Yoga aban- 

 dons his body. The Purohita enters the body of the husband, who 

 in turn is obliged to put up with the Purohita's body that is left. 

 By chance he returns not to his own home, but to the house of the 

 Purohita. 



His wife's illicit love for the Purohita has in the meantime 

 driven her to his house, and as a result, she now showers unac- 

 customed endearments upon her own husband in the guise of the 

 Purohita. The Purohita, in the meantime, has gone to the house 

 of this dissolute woman, where he passes the night, cursing his 

 fate because of her absence. In the morning the Purohita leaves 

 the house before the woman's return, and arrives at his own house 

 where he finds the husband asleep in his own bed. After mutual 

 recriminations they return to the cemetery and change back their 

 bodies. Then the husband realizes the import of what has hap- 

 pened and brings both the Purohita and his own wife before the 



