The fanfare was sounded to signal the end of the festival. Though it was nearing midnight, the spectators were not tired and showed no intention of moving away. In the clear, star-spangled Chaitra sky, the full moon floated. A crowd of enthusiastic spectators blocked the path reserved for Devi Mallika and the contestants. It was with great difficulty that the state officers managed to clear the way.

It was a custom in Sagal for young men of the nobility to carry to her home, the flower-bedecked palanquin of the girl honoured as the Daughter of Saraswati. Divya stepped shyly into the palanquin after receiving the blessings of her paternal great-grandfather, as also of her uncles and other relatives. The young nobles rushed towards the palanquin, whose four poles had room for only sixteen bearers.

Prithusen had already put his shoulder to the front pole of the palanquin, when Vasudhir pushed him from behind, wanting to take his place. But Prithusen refused to move.

At this, Rudradhir, son of Acharya Pravardhan and older than Vasudhir, shouted, ‘The son of a slave has no right to put his shoulder to the palanquin along with the young men of noble birth.’

Infuriated, Prithusen drew his sword and held it ready, ‘My sword will determine my right,’ he cried. Many swords flashed out of their scabbards on all sides.

Alarmed by the uproar, a number of dignitaries intervened, and disorder and bloodshed were averted. The palanquin of the Daughter of Saraswati, carried on the shoulders of the young nobles, moved towards the town, followed by Devi Mallika’s chariot. The palanquin went rocking over the heads of thousands of cheering people like a boat moving on the waves of the sea.

Trembling with anger like a wounded tiger, Prithusen remained standing in the limpid moonlight. The anger raging in his heart made him restless and agitated. The accident of birth! Is that a crime? … If so, how can it be set right? No power on earth, neither the force of arms nor the power of wealth or knowledge, can alter the status of one’s birth. Should man seek revenge from the gods for the injustice of his birth, or from those who, for their own selfish ends, have instituted the unfair law? Seething with hatred and not finding an outlet for his feelings of revenge, Prithusen clenched his teeth and set out in the direction of his palace, avoiding the crowd.

The Palace of the Chief Justice

HUMANITY IS LIKE A FOREST ON THE EDGE OF THE RIVER OF TIME; inundations enrich the soil of a forest. Similarly the floods of change, which, from time to time, swept the city state of Sagal, left behind rich layers of thought and experience. In this little forest of Sagal, the aged scholar Dev Sharma, Chief Justice of the Republic, stood like a great banyan tree for many years. Every hair on his head had turned white. With the passage of time, the vigour in his body dried up, but his faculties, fed by more than a hundred years of living, were still active and alert.