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OCTOBER, 1882]
A PANJAB LEGEND.
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put on your invisible cap, enter the Emerald City, and find the Princess, if you can !"
Prince Bahram-i-Ghor set out joyfully to the North, and when he saw the Emerald Mountain he rubbed the surma on his eyes, and lo! what he desired was near, and what be desired not was far. Then putting on the invisible cap, and entering the Emerald City, where houses, trees, dishes, furniture, pots and pans were all of emerald, he began to search for his dear Princess, but without success.
The fact is the Princess was locked up inside seven prisons, for her father, who doated on her, was determined she should never fly away again. When she had disappeared he had wept bitterly, but when she returned he was dreadfully angry with her for giving him such a fright, and when she told him how she was married he locked her up at once, saying, “If your husband comes to you, well and good, but you shall never go to him."
So inside seven prisons the poor Princess passed her days weeping and sighing. Now every day a woman servant brought the Princess her dinner in this manner. First she unlocked the outer door, and entered the outer prison, locking the door behind her. Then she unlocked the second door, and entered the second prison, locking the door behind her, and so on, till she came to the seventh prison, where the Princess Shâhpasand sat. Here she left the dinner, returning as she had come.
Now the Prince, who was roaming about the city in his invisible cap, poking, into all sorts of holes and corners, noticed this woman
servant every evening at the same hour with a tray of sweets on her head going in a certain direction. Being curious he followed her, and when she opened the outer door he slipped in behind her. She, of course, could not see him, 80 she went on through all the seven prisons, the Prince following close behind. When they reached the seventh prison and the Prince saw his dear Princess, he could hardly restrain himself from calling to her.
However, remembering he was invisible, he waited till the Princess began to eat, and while she ate he ate from the other side of the dish. The Princess at first could not believe her eyes when she saw the pilau disappearing in handfuls, and thought she must be dreaming, but when more than half the dishful had gone, she called out-"Who eats in the same dish with me?"
Then Prince Bahrâm-i-Ghor just lifted the cap a wee bit from his forehead, so that he was not quite visible, but showed like a figure by dawn-light. The Princess immediately called him by name, but wept thinking he was a ghost. Then the Prince removed the yech cap entirely, ard the Princess wept with joy. When the King of the Emerald Mountain heard how the Princess's husband had found his way through dangers and difficulties to his dear Princess, the old man was ever so much delighted, for he said, “Now that her husband has come tu her, my daughter will never want to go to him."
So he made the Prince his heir, and they all lived happily ever after in the Emerald Kingdom."
A PANJAB LEGEND.
BY LIEUT. R. C. TEMPLE, B.S.C., F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S. The Story of Londi, wife of Sdliváhana. were Raja Ragálů, the hero and conqueror of the According to Panjab legends the great Sali Rakshasas, and Päran Bhagat, the saint. This vâbana, called locally Sahilwån or SAlbahan, Půran Bhagat suffered, much after the manner the king of the Sakas or Skythians and from of Joseph from Potiphar's wife, from the whose accession is dated the SÂka era, A.D. 78, importunities of Lonân, his stepmother, who was Raja of Sialkot in the Northern Panjab. was the cause of all his woes, as related in He had three wives and two sons, which last are many a legend. I cannot here go into the the great heroes of Panjab stories. Their names probabilities of the stories of Salivahana,
15 Told by Habib, a Musalmin cooly, in Kashmir. The talo is a favorite and well-known one. It is impossible to say whether it is of Hindu or Musalman origin. It looks like Hinda tale fastened on to Musalman heroes. It may, however, have its origin in local versions of the tale of the Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins. Widely varying legends regarding these were current in
the middle ages both in Asia and Europe : vide, The Romans of Bauduin de Sebourg, in which, however, the Mountain is called the Red Mountain, where dwelt the lovely Ivorine. This tale and the stories about the Old Man of the Mountain have a certain family likenesa which is worth observing. See Yule's Marco Polo, vol. I, pp. ciliv-li. And 132-40.-R. C. T.
