There can be little doubt that if thou escape from this danger as also my
mother and infant brother, then thy race and the (ancestral) cake will be
perpetuated. The son is one's own self; the wife is one's friend; the
daughter, however, is the source of trouble. Do thou save thyself,
therefore, by removing that source of trouble, and do thou thereby set me
in the path of virtue. As I am a girl, O father, destitute of thee, I
shall be helpless and plunged in woe, and shall have to go everywhere. It
is therefore that I am resolved to rescue my father's race and share the
merit of that act by accomplishing this difficult task. If thou, O best of
Brahmanas, goest thither (unto the Rakshasa), leaving me here, then I
shall be very much pained. Therefore, O father, be kind to me. O thou best
of men, for our sake, for that of virtue and also thy race, save thyself,
abandoning me, whom at one time thou shall be constrained to part from.
There need be no delay, O father, in doing that which is inevitable. What
can be more painful than that, when thou hast ascended to heaven, we shall
have to go about begging our food, like dogs, from strangers. But if thou
art with thy relations from these difficulties, I shall then live happily
in the region of the celestials. It hath been heard by us that if after
bestowing thy daughter in this way, thou offerest oblations to the gods
and the celestials, they will certainly be propitious.'
"Vaisampayana continued, 'The Brahmana and his wife, hearing these various
lamentations of their daughter, became sadder than before and the three
began to weep together.
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