A festival glimpse, and a heart lost instantly

As the years passed, Vararuchi grew into a confident young scholar, and at one of Kausambi's great festivals he caught sight of a young woman named Upakosha, the daughter of his teacher's own brother, Upavarsha. It took only a glance for both of them to be thoroughly undone by it, and that night, restless with longing, Vararuchi was visited in a dream by the goddess Sarasvati herself, who assured him plainly that Upakosha had been his wife in an earlier life and wanted no one else.

A marriage arranged, and a rival returns transformed

With the families' blessing and no small amount of relief on both sides, the match was made and the two were married. But trouble arrived from an old, unlikely direction: a once-dull fellow student named Panini, who years earlier had been sent away from Varsha's household for hopeless stupidity, returned from a stretch of solitary penance in the Himalayas having won an entirely new system of grammar directly from Shiva himself.

A seven-day contest, and a god's thunder deciding it

Panini challenged Vararuchi to a formal disputation, and the two argued grammar for seven straight days. On the eighth, Vararuchi appeared to have won outright — until, without warning, Shiva's own voice rolled across the sky like thunder, declaring the entire old system of grammar that Vararuchi represented obsolete at a single stroke. Every scholar who had built a career on that old learning, Vararuchi included, was left looking like a fool overnight, no matter how sound his arguments had been only moments before.

A humiliated scholar leaves for the mountains

Stung by public disgrace, Vararuchi deposited his family's wealth with a merchant named Hiranyagupta for safekeeping, said goodbye to Upakosha, and set out fasting for the high Himalayas, determined to win Shiva's favor through penance of his own and recover, somehow, the respect he had lost in a single afternoon.

Four powerful men, one evening, one bathing woman

Left alone, Upakosha continued her daily devotions faithfully, bathing each morning in the Ganges — until one spring evening, still beautiful despite her long fast, she caught the eye of four separate men in quick succession: the king's own domestic chaplain, the city's chief magistrate, a prince's minister, and, worst of all, the merchant Hiranyagupta himself, who had lately taken to refusing to release her husband's deposited fortune unless she gave him what he wanted.

Four separate promises, all for the same night

Cornered by each man in turn as she made her way home, Upakosha kept her composure completely, and — rather than refusing any of them outright, which she judged too dangerous with her husband away — she quietly arranged a private meeting with each one for a different watch of that very same night, buying herself the time she actually needed to plan something else entirely.

A trunk built for exactly this occasion

She spent the rest of the day preparing: a great locked trunk, and a large vat of lamp-black mixed with scented oil, made to look like a fine unguent. That night, as the spring festival filled the streets outside, the prince's minister arrived first in his finest clothes, was told he must bathe before being received, and was led into a dark inner room by her maidservants — who quietly stripped him, smeared him head to foot in the sticky black oil under the guise of an expensive perfume, and, the instant the second man's arrival was announced, bundled him naked into the waiting trunk and bolted it shut.

Three more men, three more identical humiliations

The chaplain arrived next, was led in exactly the same way, oiled black in the darkness, and — panicked by news of the magistrate's arrival — shoved into the very same trunk. The magistrate followed, was treated no differently, and was stuffed in alongside the other two the moment the merchant Hiranyagupta himself finally showed up. And Hiranyagupta, once he had likewise been anointed head to toe in the dark, was pushed in last of all — leaving all four of Upakosha's would-be lovers locked together inside one trunk, filthy, naked, and far too ashamed of their own presence there to say a single word to one another, even as their bodies touched in the dark.

A truth extracted from a locked box

Before dawn, Upakosha lit a lamp, brought the merchant briefly out to demand the return of her husband's deposited wealth, and, when he denied it outright, called loudly to the men trapped inside the trunk to bear witness to his lie — which, terrified of exposure, they instantly did. She then had him shoved back inside like the others, and at first light marched the entire sealed trunk straight to King Nanda's own court.

A confession, a scandal, and a king's respect

Before the assembled court, Upakosha explained that her husband's wealth had been deposited with witnesses inside this very box, and asked the king to question the box himself. Terrified anew, the men inside confirmed the truth of the merchant's original promise rather than risk being named. The king, unable to contain his curiosity, ordered the trunk broken open in front of everyone — and out tumbled four of the city's most powerful men, coated black from head to toe, utterly unrecognizable until the court finally placed their humiliated faces. Every man present burst out laughing. All four were stripped of rank and wealth and banished from the kingdom, while Upakosha was sent home with the king's own praise and a new title: from that day on, he called her his sister, and her cleverness became the proudest story the whole city told about itself.