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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1896.
In due course, the bridal of the princes had been celebrated with pomp and glory befitting grand persons. For a considerable time the princes lived in every luxury, ease and enjoyment with their spouses of unsullied purity, in the kingdom of their respective fathers-in-law. But one day they naturally remembered their parents, and quick as thought asked their fathers-in-law concerning such and such a kingdom, admitting for the first time to the extreme satisfaction and bewilderment of the latter that they were the sons of the by no means minor king who dwelt there. The princes then made preparations to go, and, selecting an auspicious day, started amidst the blessings of their new relatives, followed by their wives, their wonderful horses, and their retinue, and reached their father-land.
Their father and mother, who were almost blinded by constant weeping for their sons whom they thought to be lost, were now very much gratified to see them safe and sound once more in their midst; but the former, notwithstanding the gratification, had a great mind to inflict condign punishment, and it was only when his wife brought to his notice their extreme dutifulness to him, excepting this breach, that he excused them half-heartedly. Yet he could not refrain from expressing his regret that they should have set aside his advice, and thus reduced him and their mother to mere skeletons.
NOTES AND QUERIES. AN UNLUCKY FLAW-BURMESE nion from the custodian of a shrine erected there. SUPERSTITION.
The priest, on being consulted, fell, or affected to Extract from a diary of Maung Ba Thare, fall, into a state of frenzy; and while thus inspired,
Ak'unwun of the Myingyan District. as was thought, by the goddess, be oried out in a AT Debyuwa, I was told of a dispute about # lond voice that a certain man whose name and seven-toothed harrow which had a flaw in caste he gave, and who dwelt in the cholera. it owing to a wrong hole being chiselled out for stricken village, had brought the visitation, one of the teeth by the maker. This harrow was and could alone remove it. The elders at purchased by one Maung Yuet from an itinerant once retarned and exhorted the man to do vendor. His fellow-villagers, as soon as they what he could. He had always been credited saw the harrow, demanded its surrender to them, with magical powers, and now, followed by on the ground that it was keeping off the rain, an anxions crowd, he proceeded to exercise and that it must be thrown into the Irrawaddy them. First he made offerings of a young pig, after being coated with banatk'd and decorated & lime, and ashes to the local deity; then, with flowers, and broken so as to be useless ! clad in a yellow garment, he ran the circuit of It is said to be the Burmese custom to crop the
the village and finally set up a small barricade hair of the maker of a harrow with a flaw in it,
across the entrance, through which, he declared, deck him with flowers and banátk'a and then
it would be impossible for cholera to pass. But make him dance and carry the harrow to the
his spells had lost their virtue, and the village
folk still went on dying. The wizard repeated the river. Otherwise the country is sure to suffer
ceremony, but again without avail; for while from drought.
he was performing it a third time, men came up Maung Yuet at first refused to give up his
saying that two more victims had been taken. harrow, and then threw it into a fishery; but after
With regard to what followed, it is impossible to much coaxing from his fellow villagers has now
speak with certainty. The police, who soon heard agreed to give it up.
B. HOUGHTON.
of what was happening, reported that the unfor. tunate man had been beaten to death by his
neighbours, as a punishment for his want of skill. PUNISHMENT OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL
The villagers told another story. Disheartened, WIZARD.
they said, by his failure, he proceeded to demolish THERE was lately an outbreak of cholera in a the shrine of the goddess whom he had invoked in remote Gond village in the Central Provinces. vain. He was carrying off her image, intent on The local deities were cither supposed to be power
throwing it into the river, when he himself was less in the matter, or were suspected of conniv.
seized with the cholera and died within a few ance, and the headmen accordingly repaired to a neighbouring hamlet to obtain an impartial opi.
R. O. TEMPLE.
