File:BASWAN-BHAWANI Parikshit conversation with frog.jpg

English: Parikshit, the grandson of Arjuna, the great archer, had a very peculiar wife named Sushobhna. ‘Make sure,’ she had told him before she agreed to marry him, ‘that I never look upon a water body.’ Parikshit had assumed that his wife was afraid of water and so, to make her comfortable, he ensured that she never went near a well or pond or lake. Parikshit was obsessed with his wife. He even neglected his royal duties so that he could be with her, much to the irritation of his courtiers and ministers. One day, in a spirit of merriment, he took her to a garden, in the centre of which there was a lake. As soon as Sushobhna saw the lake, she jumped in and did not come out again. Parikshit feared the worst. Had she drowned? He ordered the lake to be pumped dry. When the lake had been dried, he found no sign of his wife. Only frogs were sitting on the lakebed. Maybe the frogs had killed his wife and eaten her, he thought. ‘Kill the frogs,’ he commanded. So Parikshit soldiers went about killing the frogs until the frog king, Ayu, begged Parikshit to stop. ‘Your wife is my daughter, a frog princess,’ he said. ‘And this is how she seduces men and breaks their hearts. If you stop the massacre, I will order my daughter to return to you and serve you as a wife should, and not play her cruel games of love.’ Parikshit agreed, and the frog princess took human form again. Sushobhna followed Parikshit back to his palace, but somehow the love between them was not as it was before.