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JULY, 1924 ]
FOLK-TALES FROM NORTHERN INDIA
So they were married and started for home with their brides. They halted at an inn, and during the night the elder brother heard an ass bray. So he arose, drew his sword and cut off its head. Soon afterwards he heard a cat mew under his bed : so he arose and killed it too. When his wife saw this, she realised that he had a hot temper, and made no attempt to beat hiin with shoes.
Meanwhile the younger brother used to be thrashed daily by his wife, and at last, find. ing his brother so much better off, he asked his advice. When his brother told him how he had managed, he ran hoine and forth with killed the cat with his sword. His wife laughed and said :
" Garbah kushtan roz avval” i.e., “If you go to kill the cat, it is better to do it the first day." After that she nevet troubled him. [This story appears in Fallon's Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs.-ED.)
9. Tho Brahman and the money-bags.
(Told by Ramdhan Misra, schoolmaster, Gonda. ) A Brahman, walking through a jungle one day, saw four bags of money. "These are four witches," he said and went his way. Soon after he met four sepoys who asked him if the road was safe. "There are four witches ahead," said he : " you had better be cau. tions." When the sepoys saw the bage of money, they exclaimed, “What a fool that Pandit was. He calls these money bags witches.". Two of them stayed with the treasure, and the other two went to the bazar to buy food. The two latter planned to put poison in the sweets, so that their companions should die and all the treasure be theirs. The other two made a similar plan, and when their comrades arrived with the sweets, they attacked them with their swords and slew them. Then they ate the sweets and died also,
After a while the Brahman returned to see how the sepoys had sped with the treasure, and found all four lying dead beside it. He took pity on them, and, cutting his little finger, poured some nectar into their mouths, and they came to life. They cast themselves at his feet and said, "Verily, those are witches indeed." So they gave up the world and became disciples of the Brahman
10. The death of Sheikh Chilli.
-- ( Told by Mukund Lal, clerk, of Mirzapur. ) Once upon a time Sheikh Chilli asked a Pandit when he was likely to die. The Pandit replied, "You will die when a red thread comes out of your back." One day it happened that Sheikh Chilli entered the shop of a Pathera or silk thread maker, and a thread stuck to his back. Seeing it, he thought to himself, “I am now certainly dead." So he went to a grave-yard and dug himself a grave; then sat beside it and put a black pot on his head. A traveller who passed by asked Sheikh Chilli the way to the city. Replied the Sheikh, "I would gladly have told you, but don't you see that I really cannot, because I am dead." The traveller went his way, laughing at bis folly.
"In the Turkish jost book which purports to relate the witless sayings of the Khoja Nasr-ed-din, he is persuaded to be dead and allows himself to be stretched on a bier and borne to the cemetery. On the way the bearers, coming to a miry place, said, "we will rest here," and began to converse ; whereupon the Khoja, raising his head remarked, "If I were alive, I would get out of this place as soon as possible,"_"an incident which is also found in a Hindu story book." Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 33.-W. CRCONI.)
