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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JUNE, 1921
And Hir replied :-"Listen Milki, my mother as long as breath remains in my body I will not leave Ranjha. Yea! though they carve me into little pieces and I become & martyr at Karbala. And so I shall go to meet the famous lovers of old, I shall see Laila, and Majnûn and Sassi who was drowned in the river."
And Milki was wroth with Hir and said " This then is the reward your father and I receive for the love we have bestowed on our daughter. We thought we had planted a rose in our garden but it is a prickly thorn. You visit Ranjha daily in the forest and take him food and cake and pasty. You heed not what your parents say. Daughters who are disobedient to their parents are not daughters but prostitutes."
But Hîr would not listen to her mother and continued to visit Ranjha in the forest.
Meanwhile Kaidu the cripple, Hir's uncle, constantly urged. Chachak to chastise Hir. He kept watch over her footsteps as a spy. He smelt the savour of the pasty and he secretly followed Hir when she went to the forest. At last the cunning of the cripple succeeded. Hir had gone to the river to fetch water and Ranjha was sitting alone, so Kaidu in the guise of a mendicant faqir came to him and begged for alms in the name of God. And Ranjha, thinking he was truly a holy man, gave him half of his pasty. Kaidu gave him & fagfr's blessing and retired towards the villago.
When Hir came back from the river she asked Ranjha where the other half of the pasty was, and he told her that a crippled faqir had come and begged in God's name, and as he seemed a saintly man he had given him half the pasty. Hir replied “Ranjha, where have your wits gone! That was no saintly fagfr but my Satanic uncle Kaidu who goes about to destroy mo. Did I not warn you! He is as evil as Satan. He separates husbands from wives and mothers from daughters. He is a great hypocrite, for what he sets up with his hands by day he kicks down by night with his feet. He will put in motion the well-gear of destruction and will drop ak juice into our milk." Ranjha replied to Hir:"Kaidu has only just left and he cannot be far away. Go and stop him on some pretence."
The heart of Hir was scorched with anger against Kaidu so she ran and overtook him in the way and fell on him in her wrath like a tigress. She tore off his faqir's cap and ropes of beads and threw them on the ground. She thrashed him even as a washerman beats his clothes on the washing-board. She thundered in her wrath "Give me back the pasty if you wish your life to be spared ; else I will bind you hand and foot and hang you to a tree. Why do you pick quarrels with girls! Half of the pasty fell on the ground : the other half Kaidu snatched from Hir, and having secured his prize, the cripple ran off as fast as his crooked legs would carry him to the village.
Then Kaidu came before the council of the village elders and said :-"See, here are the pieces of pasty which Hîr gave to Ranjha. Will you now believe when I tell you she is a shameless hussy? Why does somebody not tell Chachak to chastise her? She is bringing shame and humiliation on the kindred. Chachak should have repented the day on which he engaged this cowherd. His wits must have forsaken him that he has not turned Ranjha away." And they came and told Chûchak what Kaidu had been saying in the assembly of the elders.
And Chachak was wroth and said :-"Kaidu is a tale-bearer and a liar: he chases moths all day. He thinks he becomes a perfect fagir by wearing a rosary. He thinks the girdle makes the darvesh. Why does he wag the tongue of slander against Hir! She
