Indian Antiquary Vol 09

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 11

JANUARY, 1880.)
BENGALI FOLKLORE LEGENDS.
but I cannot find any one to fetch it now." determined on this, she called her servant and After some time she remembered that she had said to her, "The boy who was walking behind never paid the plum-seller, and he was still the diwan came in front of the house, and looked standing at the side-door; then she sent her and winked his eye at me. Now, go and tell my servant to call him and tell him that he would father all about it, and say that he must cut the receive four annas for his plams, and four annas boy in pieces and send his blood to me, and more if he would get a young cocoanut from if he will not do so, I will kill myself." So the the tree, and that he was to come for the eight servant went and told the king, and when the
nas early the next morning. So the prince king heard of it, he sent a messenger to seize agreed and fetched th- young cocoannt from the diwan and the boy. The messenger went the tree, and the city kôtwal drank its water and quickly as he was ordered by the king, and quenched his thirst. After this, the princess seized the diwan and the boy, and the king told was disturbed in her sleep by a leg of the bed
them what he had heard from the princess' breaking, so she thought, "If the plam-seller servant. Then the prince began to cry, and the will come and sit under the bed and support it king seeing this, felt pity for him, and he rememlike a leg, I will give him another four annas; bered that the princess had only wished to see so that he will receive twelve annas in the his blood and did not ask for his head, so she morning." She sent a message to him by her would be satisfied if the blood of some animal servant, and he agreed and came into the prin- were shown her, and the boy might be banished cess' house, and sat under the bed like a leg. to another country. He determined on doing Then he began to reproach himself, saying, this, and calling a messenger, gave him his "Good God ! it is written in my ill fate that instructions privately. Then the messenger took I am to sit under this bed and support it like a the boy down to the ghât where bodies were leg whilo my wife sleeps on it." So he was burnt and said to him, "The princess' life will much troubled in his mind. When the morn- be saved if you are cat in pieces and your blood ing came the plum-seller thought, “If I stop given to her, and she has given orders that this here for my money, the princess will recognize is to be done, but I will save you ; you must fly me, so I will conceal myself and see what she from this kingdom, and I will kill a dog and will do;" then he went away.
give its blood to the princess." So saying, the That day the king's diwan met him, and messenger let the boy go, and killed a dog and when he saw his appearance he thought that he put its blood in a pot and gave it to the prinmust be the son of some great person, and being cess. When she saw it, she was very much much pleased with his conversation, he said to | pleased and said laughing, "I was always send. him, “Come and live in my house and I will ing you letters to come to me and you never support you," so the prince went to the diwan's came, and now you have paid the penalty for house and lived there. Now the diwân had all the trouble you caused me. How do you feel neither son nor daughter, so he treated the now? I will have your blood given to á crow." plam-seller as if he were his own son. After She then ordered a servant to give it to a crow, some time the diwân said to him, “ You can read and when the crow had drunk it, her anger was and write very well, you must come with me appeased, and she lived at ease with the kôtwal. every day to the king's court and write in my In the meantime the king's son left the kingdom office." From that day forward he went to the in tears, and gained his livelihood by begging. office, and wrote; but one day, after the office At last he went back to his own country, and was closed, the prince was going home with the lived in the thatched hut, and when he laid down diwan, when the princess saw him from the top and fell asleep, his father appeared to him in of the house and knew that he was her husband, a dream, and said, "My son, why do you suffer 80 she was very much disturbed and began to such hardships? Whilst I wis alive, I lent your reflect on what she should do; but being in love father-in-law seven crores of rupees, and he with the kôtwal, she had no mercy on her gave me a bond engraved on a copper plate. I husband, and determined to have him killed and put this bond into a tin box and buried it under his body thrown away, that she might live with a champak tree; go and dig it up and obtain the the kôtwal without annoyance. When she had money." When he had said this, he departed.