The Two Heads and One Wife

Two devoted friends traveled together with one man's new wife toward a temple of the goddess Kali, and along the way, in a moment of religious fervor, one friend beheaded himself as an offering to the goddess. Grief-stricken, the other friend, seeing his companion's sacrifice, beheaded himself too, unable to bear the loss.

The wife, left utterly alone with two headless bodies, begged the goddess for mercy, and Kali, moved by her devotion, granted that she could restore both men to life by fitting each head back onto a body. In her haste and overwhelming grief, the woman — trembling and not looking carefully enough — accidentally placed her husband's head onto his friend's body, and the friend's head onto her husband's body.

Both men came back to life completely healthy, but now each had his own head atop the other's body, and a bitter dispute arose: which one was truly her husband — the one with her husband's head and thoughts, or the one with her husband's original body? The matter was brought before a wise judge, who ruled that since the head governs thought, memory, and identity far more than the body ever could, the man bearing her husband's head was to be recognized as her true husband, regardless of which body he now wore.