He was enslaved by the magical beauty of Queen Pingla, who feared none since Bharthari was under her “spell”. She wandered around fearlessly and fell in love with the stable master.
Prince Vikramaditya, the king’s younger brother, considered Bharthari as a father figure and Pingla as a mother. The king had made him the Prime Minister. Vikramaditya was the first to have suspicions regarding Pingla’s adultery. After much deliberation he finally informed his brother about her misdeeds. Besotted with Pingla, the king took offence and reprimanded his own brother.
The king considered Pingla as the epitome of high moral character. After some days she made a request to the king, “your younger brother is like a son to me and I have always tried to be a mother to him but he looks at me in a lustful manner. He has made several attempts to defile me, and not only me, but he has destroyed purity of many women in this kingdom. A few days ago he had attempted to lure the daughter-in-law of the Brahmin with the assistance of maids, but she, like me, too is a faithful woman and resisted his intentions. I implore you to stay alert and be very wary about such an unscrupulous man. I do not want you to be in any danger from him.” Upon hearing this, the king took every word to be the utmost truth.
Then Pingla called the Brahmin and told him to go to the king and tell him exactly what she wanted to him to do. She threatened him of dire consequences if he refused.
A fearful Brahmin went to see the king the next day and told him that Vikramaditya had defiled his daughter-in-law. Filled with rage, the king without any investigation immediately ordered his younger brother’s
expulsion from the kingdom.
One day a Brahmin arrived in the king’s court and told the king about the fruit of immortality, which he had obtained after appeasing the deity? He and his wife couldn’t eat that fruit as they feared that both
would have to endure poverty forever and he wished to give it to the king in return for some wealth. Bharthari took the fruit in exchange for wealth.
The king didn’t eat the fruit himself but gave it to his beloved Pingla, who in turn gave it to her lover, Mahipala. The lover didn’t eat the fruit either but gave it to his favourite maid, who accepted the fruit but began to contemplate her lifestyle, “I have sinned all my life, destroyed many marriages. If I eat this fruit and become eternal then I will have to endure all this. It's better I give this fruit to the king, who has given me so many pleasures.” And thus she presented the fruit to the king.
A stunned king asked her, “who gave you this fruit.” On inquiry she told him the whole story truthfully. The king immediately summoned the stable master and asked him about the fruit. Mahipala fell at the
king’s feet and narrated about his affair with the queen.
This filled the king with hatred for Pingala in particular and the world in general. He, after leaving the kingdom to Vikramaditya, renounced the world and became a saint and spent his life in search of the truth.
This story is a popular folklore in central India. Some decades back the story of Bharthari was popularly played by various nautanki groups in villages.
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