Story Of The Faithless Wife And The Ungrateful Blind Man

Honest framing

This page is for older teens and adults. It is a classic double lesson on betrayal of trust and ingratitude after rescue — not a preschool bedtime story. If the brand is kids-only, Publisher may noindex.

Story

### The stick in the forest

In Mithila a young Brahman, quarrelled with his father-in-law, set out on pilgrimage to Banaras. In a forest he met a blind man led by his wife with a stick — she holding one end, he the other. She was young and fair. The pilgrim signed that she should leave her husband and go with him. The proposal pleased her. She told the blind man to sit under a tree while she plucked him a ripe mango — and walked away with the Brahman.

Hours passed. No one came. The blind man understood what had been done to him and cursed both wife and tempter. Six days he sat there without rice or water, nearly dead, until footsteps approached.

### The Setti’s compassion

A Setti merchant and his wife found him. He told how his wife had deserted him. They shared their small rice and water. The Setti asked his wife to lead the blind man with the stick. She hesitated — walking thus with a man not her husband — then reflected that charity undone is charity wasted, and took the stick.

After a day’s travel they reached a town and lodged with a friend. Before tasting a morsel themselves, the Setti and his wife gave the blind man a share of their rice. At dawn they advised him to find work in the town and prepared to leave.

### The false cry

Forgetting every kindness, the blind man raised an alarm in the street: Is there no king here? This Setti rascal is taking away my wife! Because I am blind she denies me and follows that rogue!

The crowd reported to the king. The fact that the Setti’s wife had led the blind man seemed, to hasty eyes, to prove the blind man was her husband. The king sentenced the Setti to the gallows for enticing a married woman, and his wife to the kiln for forsaking a blind husband.

### The sting of the lie

The blind man was thunderstruck. He had meant only to claim the woman for himself and punish the Setti. Now both innocents were condemned. Vile wretch that I am, he muttered. My real wife deserted me — and by a lie I have sent to death the pair who saved me from the tree.

Bystanders overheard and told the king. Alarmed at his own rashness, the king released the Setti and his wife and caused the ungrateful blind man to be punished in their place.

(In the frame-tale of Tales of the Sun, a minister tells this to a king as a warning against hasty judgment — the double wound of faithlessness and ingratitude, plus the danger of justice that does not look twice.)