The King's Charges

So I am free, said Janaka, and now I have something to say about you. Your youth and beauty and delicacy do not fit your discipline. What you have done does not fit the sign you bear. You have come to test whether I am free, and you have laid hold of what is mine. A woman moved by desire has no right to the triple staff.

By whose leave did you enter my kingdom and my city? By whose leave did you enter my heart? You are a brahmin woman, of the highest class, and I am a kṣatriya, of the class of warriors and kings; there can be no union between us, and that is a confusion of the classes. You live by the dharma of freedom, as one who has renounced the world, and I live as a householder; to mix those two stages of life is a second confusion. I do not know whether you are of my clan or not, nor do you know mine; that is a third. And if your husband is living, even if he is away, another man's wife is forbidden to me; that is a fourth.

You have done all this either in ignorance or in false knowledge. You came not to test me alone, but to defeat my whole assembly. Deluded by the pride of your power, you let loose the weapon of yoga, like poison and nectar in one. Do not touch me; know your own scripture and keep to it. Tell me truly your birth and learning and conduct, your nature, and why you have come.

Sulabhā was not shaken by these harsh and unfitting words.