The Tale of the Transposed Heads

Betaal began a new tale as Vikramaditya carried him silently through the dark cremation ground once more. Two close friends, traveling together, arrived at a temple of the goddess Kali, where one friend's beloved wife accompanied them. Overwhelmed by devotional fervor at the sight of the goddess, the first friend beheaded himself before the altar as an offering.

When his companion discovered the body, he was so overcome with grief at losing his dearest friend that he too beheaded himself before the same altar, unable to imagine facing the world without him. The wife, arriving to find both men dead, prepared to end her own life in despair as well — until the goddess herself, moved by such devotion, appeared and offered to restore both men to life, if only the wife would reattach each head to its rightful body.

In her frantic grief and haste, however, the trembling wife reattached the heads to the wrong bodies — her husband's head now sat upon his friend's body, and the friend's head upon her husband's. Both men revived, whole and alive, but now each bearing the head of one man and the body of the other. "Tell me, Vikram," Betaal demanded, "which of these two is truly the woman's husband — the one with her husband's head, or the one with her husband's body? Answer, or your skull will shatter into a hundred pieces!"

Vikramaditya answered without hesitation: "The one with her husband's head is her true husband, for the head governs thought, memory, and identity — the body is merely its vessel. A man is known first by his mind, not his limbs." Having spoken, the king broke his vow of silence once again, and Betaal, laughing, flew back to his tree — leaving Vikram to begin the long walk back to fetch him once more.