The Weaver's Wife and the Severed Nose

Robbed of everything, Devasharma reached a village at dusk and was given shelter in a weaver's house. The master of the house was tired from the day's work, drank, and fell asleep. His wife had arranged to meet her lover that night; she dressed and was on her way out.

But the weaver woke and saw it all. In a fury he tied her tight to a pillar, and then, still drunk, fell asleep beside her.

Just then her friend the barber's wife arrived — the woman who carried her messages. The tied-up wife said: "Sister, take my place at the pillar; I will be back quickly." The barber's wife untied her, bound herself in her place, and the wife slipped out of the house.

After a while the weaver stirred again and said: "Still nothing to say?" Getting no answer, his rage flared; he took a sharp blade and cut off the nose of the woman tied there — "Now speak!" — and went back to sleep. He never knew it was someone else at the pillar.

The barber's wife went home noseless. There she staged the whole thing as though her own husband had done it, and in the morning she went wailing to the village assembly: "Look what this man has done to an innocent wife!" The elders, examining nothing, going only by her weeping and her ruined face, found the wretched barber guilty and sentenced him.

Meanwhile the weaver's wife came back, freed her friend, tied herself up again, and in the morning called down heaven on her own honour so boldly — "If I am a faithful wife, let the gods restore my nose!" — that when the foolish weaver saw her nose whole in the dim lamplight he fell at her feet and begged forgiveness.

Devasharma, who had watched and heard all of it through the night, understood: this net of deceit is spread in every house; his own loss was nothing singular. He put down his grief and set out for his monastery at dawn.

एताः हसन्ति च रुदन्ति च कार्यहेतोः विश्वासयन्ति च परं न च विश्वसन्ति । तस्मान्नरः कुलशीलवता च युक्तो नार्यः श्मशानघटिका इव वर्जनीयाः ॥

Moral: They laugh and they weep as the purpose requires; they win another's trust and give none themselves. Such women are to be shunned as one shuns a pot from the cremation ground.

From the Panchatantra, Book I — The Loss of Friends.