Mariada Ramanna's father, when he heard of his son's honour and appointment at court, was in no wise pleased at his good fortune. To him it seemed that the office of a Judge was no empty honor, involving, as it did the sifting of truth from a mass of falsehood, and such at times was the difficulty that even the Devas found it impossible to discover on which side truth and justice lay. He therefore, did his best to persuade his son to relinquish the office as in his opinion, the Judge who gave an erroneous or unjust. Raman however did not agree to this and declared that God had endowed him with a keenness of perception and wisdom sufficient to detect the hardest case, and that, acting to the best of his talents and placing his trust in Heavenly guidance, he feared not going wrong or incurring sin. Seeing that his son was firm in his resolve, the father resigned him to his fate and decided to betake himself to the life of a wanderer, so that he might not be on the spot to hear the cries of the litigants who might unjustly lose their causes by the mistakes of his son, and that he might not be a participator of his sin by associating with him.
He, accordingly, left the house, one day, without acquainting his son, and arrived, towards night fall, at a neighbouring village, where he laid himself down to rest on the outer pial of a house from which the master was absent. Now, it so happened that the owner of the house had two wives and a child by the younger of them, and that the latter was not very faithful to her spouse. She awoke at about midnight, when her infant and her co-wife were both fast asleep, and opening the door, admitted her paramour, and was enjoying his company. Suddenly, she heard her baby set up a cry, and for fear that the household might be awakened and her guilt discovered, the wretched mother made no scruple to silence its cries by squeezing its neck. Having let her midnight visitor depart, she immediately began a most piercing lamentation for the death of her child, which she attributed to the first wife.
The officers of the law accordingly took up the parties to Mariada Ramanna for justice, and, thither also, his father followed them in disguise. He had been awake all night, and had seen what had happened. He therefore, said to himself "I shall see how my son acquits himself in this case, for if he succeeds in discovering the truth of this affair, he may well be trusted to elucidate the most intricate mystery."
On hearing the parties, Mariada Ramanna was unable to make up his mind as to the real author of this child-murder. The second wife persisted in charging the elder wife, while the latter protested her innocence with equal vehemence. The former declared that she herself had seen the crime perpetrated but had no witnesses, and the latter had nobody to vouch for her innocence but her own vehement protestation.
Mariada Ramanna inwardly prayed to God for guidance in the matter, and after a short deliberation, directed the two women, accuser and accused, to swear to the truth of their respective assertions, unsupported as they were by other evidence, by going round the assembly three times, quite naked, and repeating their stories. The junior wife, the real culprit, no sooner did she hear the words than she made ready to strip, but the elder, resolved rather to lay down her life than thus expose herself to shame, declared that she was ready to admit that she had committed the crime. Mariada Ramanna was satisfied, from their respective behaviours, that the second wife was the real murderess of her child, and began to interrogate her, with such success that he forced her to confess her guilt and falsehood, and she was accordingly sentenced to be hanged.
Mariada Ramanna's father was so delighted at his son's sharpness, that he threw off his disguise, went up on him and declared that he was overjoyed to find how well he deserved the honor and position conferred him by the King, and that, henceforth, he had no doubt of his acquitting himself thoroughly well in his office, He assured him also that he had been an eyewitness of the occurrences of the previous night, and that the real culprit was the unchaste wife, as Mariada Raman had so cleverly found out.
