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JULY, 1999.] FOLKLORE IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES OF INDIA; No. 12.
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FOLKLORE IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES OF INDIA.
BY M. N. VENKETSWAMI, M.R.A.S., OF NAGPUR.
No. 12. - The Fulfilment of a Curse. THERE Was a certain ascetic practising austerities in a forest. An emporor's son, while riding there with his friends and followers and with bows and arrows to shoot at birds, saw a dead snake lying on the ground, and an ascetic close by. "This fellow is performing a great penance," said the prince, and, taking the dead snake, hang it round the neck of the holy man, and moved on. It was the height of the rainy season, and the dead spake got wetter and wetter, became putrid, and thousands of creatures engendered in it. When the sun rose one morning after some days the worms showed themselves to be very active by creeping about the body of the ascetic; and when he scratched his body the discomfort caused thereby was indescribable. Enduring it no longer be opened his eyes and found myriads of worms creeping about his body and a putrid smell emanating therefrom, and the snake though decayed and in pieces still hanging on to him,
- Who put this on to my neck ?" said the ascetic, and cursed the man, saying: -“May the very same snake bite him, and suck his life's blood."
His penance being thus vitiated, the ascetic went to the river bank to clean himself and renew it.
Now in the emperor's country his puróhit, his priest and his astrologer, said to him one morning on their ugual visit to the palace : -"O emperor, your son will be bitten by a snake on such and such a day and at such and such an hour. The prince has disturbed the austerities of an ascetic. The catastrople cannot be averted, do what we may."
With a heavy heart the emperor heard the prophecy, and, saying within himself, " let us see how this shall come to pass," got the palace thoroughl; swept and cleaned from the ceiling to the ground, inside and out; and the fissures or chinks in the walls cemented with chunam and the holes of the running drains covered up with masonry, and took every precaution so that no enake should be harboured there, and on the day on which the snake was to bite the prince he had fires burning brightly around the palace, and permitting no egress or ingress even to a bird, waited for the worst. The whole population on the other hand, upon whom a gloom bad been cast, poured into the palace-yard with deep sorrow, many wailing and all wishing that the evil hour might pass away without mishap to their emperor's son.
The news of the misfortune that was to happen to the prince on such and such a day and at such and such an hour was not confined to his country, but spread like wild fire in the seventy-six subsidiary kingdoms over which the emperor held sway, and every subject, the high and the low, sympathised with the emperor. And so popular was he that in one of the subject countries a mother said to her son, reputed to be a very great doctor: "You who kņow so much that every drag yields to you its virtue! You who know so well incantations, messengers from Hanumând to the daityas," that every one of them seem to be at your beck and call! The emperor's son is in danger of death by A snake bite. Will you not go and cure him ?"
So saying, she rolled up a bundle containing the remains of the precious evening's food in his hands and bid him go to the capital. As he was going, the site, in the guise of an old man, was also going there. It entered into conversation with the medicine man and asked : -" Where are you going ?"
“I am going to cure the king's son, who is going to be bitten by a snake !" "Can you cure him?" “ Yes, I can." - Really," interrogated the old man (i. o., the serpent in diegties). " Yes, or else I shall make a sacrifice of my medical books and incantation books to the fire." "Well, I am the serpent. I am going to bite the prince. You will see my power." 1 Hanuman is the patron of noroerers,
• Demona,
