A wandering scholar remembers who he is

Malyavan, reborn on earth as a scholar named Gunadhya, had spent years in the service of King Satavahana before an old vow — which he would soon explain — forced him to give up the use of ordinary human speech. Sorrowful and searching, he came at last to Durga's shrine in the Vindhya hills, was directed onward just as Vararuchi once had been, and found his way to Kanabhuti. The instant he arrived, his true memory returned to him in a rush, and he greeted the waiting spirit not in Sanskrit or any of the languages he had sworn off, but in the one tongue his vow had never touched: the strange, guttural speech of the Pisachas themselves.

An old promise, and a request for one more story first

Kanabhuti recognized at once what this meant, and — before finally passing on the great tale that would free them both — asked Gunadhya, just as he had once asked Vararuchi, to first tell his own life story from the very beginning. Gunadhya agreed, and began.

A sister's secret, and a serpent-prince's confession

In the city of Supratishthita, a Brahmin named Somasharman had died leaving two sons and a daughter, Shrutartha, in each other's care. When the unmarried sister was found to be pregnant, her brothers grew deeply suspicious of each other, until she revealed the true father: a Naga prince named Kirtisena, a serpent-demon of royal blood, who had secretly married her by a private rite after seeing her bathe. Summoned by her thought alone, the prince appeared, confirmed everything she had said, and explained that all three siblings were living out an old curse that only the birth of this child could finally end.

A blessed birth, and an old curse completed

The prince vanished, and within days the child — Gunadhya himself — was born, hailed at once by a voice from heaven as an incarnation of virtue. His mother and uncles, their own curse spent at last, died soon after, leaving the boy alone but self-reliant; he traveled to the Deccan for his education, and returned years later to his home city, fully grown and accomplished.

A city full of small, telling stories

Walking back into Supratishthita after his long absence, Gunadhya passed through streets alive with every kind of human folly and cleverness at once — priests chanting, scholars arguing points of scripture, gamblers praising their own vice, and merchants boasting of their business skill. Two of those boasts, overheard in passing, stayed with him as stories worth remembering in their own right.

The merchant who started with nothing but a dead mouse

One merchant told of how, left destitute after his father's death, he had once approached a wealthy lender who mocked him by handing over a single dead mouse as an insult disguised as capital. The young man took the mouse without complaint, sold it as cat's meat for a handful of grain, traded that grain for firewood from grateful woodcutters, and slowly built up a modest stock of timber — which he then sold at a large profit during a sudden shortage caused by heavy rain. From that single mouse, patiently reinvested again and again, he built an entire fortune, married the very lender's own daughter, and was known ever after simply as Mouse.

The Brahmin who learned worldly ways a little too literally

The other tale concerned a young priest, comfortable in his position but eager to seem worldlier, who was advised by a roguish friend to visit a certain lady and win her over with a little sama — meaning, in ordinary speech, some flattery and charm. The literal-minded priest, mistaking the word for the sacred Sama Veda he had spent his life chanting, arrived at her house and began loudly intoning Vedic hymns instead, to the baffled amusement of everyone present, and fled in a panic the moment the gathered rakes threatened to throw him bodily out into the street — utterly convinced, all the same, that he had successfully learned the ways of the world.

A new minister, honored above his rivals

Amused and instructed in equal measure by everything he had seen, Gunadhya reached the royal court at last, was praised by the assembled ministers as a man whose very name meant rich in virtue, and was appointed minister on the spot by an impressed King Satavahana.

A garden planted by a goddess, and a king's unusual name

Curious one day about a beautiful royal garden, Gunadhya learned from its keeper that it had been created by a starving, silent ascetic on the very edge of suicide, whom Durga had spared and rewarded with the seed of an entire heavenly garden instead. And when Kanabhuti later asked why the king himself was called Satavahana, Gunadhya explained that too: a childless, grieving king named Dvipikarni had once been promised a son riding upon a lion, and duly found and slew what turned out to be a cursed Yaksha living in that very shape — releasing the spirit from an old curse and inheriting, in its place, an orphaned boy to raise as his own heir. Named for the very creature he had once been carried by, that boy grew up to become the King Satavahana whom Gunadhya now served.