In Somadeva’s ‘The Red Lotus of Chastity,” readers are
shown two sides of the same coin: good and evil of disguise. While our heroine,
Devasmita, uses disguise to keep honor and foil her enemies, another female,
Yogakarandika, a wandering nun, gleefully partakes in evil disguises.
Yogakarandika claims to have the ability of sight in
order to gain Devasmita’s trust; a trust she wants to gain only in order to
betray Devasmita by steering her to be untrue to her husband. Yogakarandika
devised a plan to demonstrate her sight abilities by claiming she knew Devasmita’s
dog from a previous life; a life where she voluntarily, frequently cheated on
her wealthy, Brahmin husband. The woman who did
not cheat on her husband is being punished in this life. Yogakarandika says
to Devasmita, “Our highest duty, you know, it to yield to the demands of sense
and element. That is why I in this present life have the privilege of
remembering past existences. But she in her ignorance guarded her chastity, and
so she has been reborn a bitch, though she does remember her other life” (Somadeva
1277). To seal this disguise, Yogakarandika had already secretly fed the
Devasmita’s dog “a piece of meat covered with sneezing powder” in order to make
sure she could claim this dog (or woman she knew from the past life) was crying
(1277). Yogakarandika, believing this has gained Devasmita’s trust, sends all
four brother merchants on four separate nights to Devasmita’s home disguised as
her pupil (1277).
In order to not only keep her honor, but also to foil
her enemies’ plots, Devasmita must use disguise as well. She keeps her honor by
instructing one of her maids to dress up as her, Devasmita, in order to drug
each merchant, give them proper punishment, and leave them with a dog’s paw
mark on their forehead (1277-8). However, Devasmita’s most important disguise
is as a man. She must travel to find her husband before the four merchant
brothers can find him. However, in order to travel, she must disguise herself along
with her maids as merchants (men) (1279).
Much like Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night, where the heroine, Viola, must disguise herself as a
man for her own safety and ease of travel, the women in this story are left to
their own tools of disguise to live their lives unreservedly. However,
Devasmita is congratulated for her disguises; she even wins praise from her
mother-in-law, a highly sought after approval in Indian culture (1278). The
last line reads, “Honored by all upright people, Devasmita, with the ransom she
had received and the husband she had rejoinded, returned to their city
Tamralipti and never again was she separated from the husband she loved”
(1279). However, Yogakarandika and her equally as evil pupil both receive a
traditional punishment, “the chaste wife cut off their noses and ears and
tossed them outside in a sewage pit” (1278).
Somadeva. "The Red Lotus of Chastity.” The Norton
Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Vol. 1. New York: W.W.
Norton, 2013. 1274-1279. Print.
