"And any clothes which either of us had over, we gave to some poor person or other. Then there arose a grievous famine in our country, and owing to that the allowance of food, which we had to receive every day, began to come to us in small quantities. Then our bodies became attenuated by hunger, and we began to despond in mind, when once on a time at meal-time there arrived a weary Bráhman guest. To him we both gave all our own food, as much as we had, though we were in danger of our lives. When the Bráhman had eaten and departed, my husband's breath left him, as if angry that he respected a guest more than it. And then I heaped up in honour of my husband a suitable pyre, and ascended it, and so laid down the load of my own calamity. Then I was born in a royal family, and I became your queen, for the tree of good deeds produces to the righteous inconceivably glorious fruit." When his queen said this to him, the king Dharmadatta said--"Come, my beloved, I am that husband of thine in a former birth; I was that very Devadása the merchant's servant, for I have remembered this moment this former existence of mine." Having said this, and mentioned the tokens of his own identity, the king, despondent and yet glad, suddenly went with his queen to heaven. "In this way my parents went to another world, and my mother's sister brought me to her own house to rear me, and while I was unmarried, there came there a certain Bráhman guest, and my mother's sister ordered me to wait on him. And I diligently strove to please him as Kuntí to please Durvásas, and owing to a boon conferred by him, I obtained you, a virtuous husband. Thus good fortune is the result of virtue, owing to which my parents were both born at the same time in royal families, and also remembered their former birth." Having heard this speech of the queen Tárádattá, the king Kalingadatta, who was exclusively devoted to righteousness, answered her, "It is true, a trifling act of righteousness duly performed will bring much fruit, and in proof of this, O queen, hear the ancient tale of the seven Bráhmans." Story of the seven Bráhmans who devoured a cow in time of famine. [443]