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MARCH, 1926 ]
FOLK-TALES FROM NORTHERN INDIA
51
Lakho was thus defeated by the wit of the parrot, but she vowed vengeance against him. So one day when she had danced and sing before the king, and he offered her what she pleased, she asked for the parrot. She took the bird home and gave it to her servant, and told her to cook it at once for her dinner. The servant plucked the parrot and laid it down for a moment, and went for a knife to cut its throat, when the parrot, seeing a chance of saving its life, crept into the house drain and hid there. When the servant came back, she thought that a cat must have carried off the bird, so she bought another parrot in the bazar and cooked it for her mistress..
By and by the parrot grew his feathers again and flew into a tree near the house of Lakho. One night he called out to her from the tree, and she thought that it was the voice of an angel from heaven. The parrot said :
"Lakho ! I am an angel of the Lord, and if you obey my words, a heavenly chariot will come down from heaven and fetch you up. First, you must give all your wealth to the poor and leave yourself not a single rag. Then you must go at night naked to the palace of the king and there the heavenly chariot will come to fetch you".
She obeyed the heavenly voice, and when all her wealth was gone, she went at night to the palace of the king. But the heavenly chariot never came, and in the morning the servants found her lying naked there, and she was mocked of all the city. Thus the parrot was revenged of her and when he told the tale to the king, he was received back into the Court.
102. The Dog and the Brahman.
(Told by Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube.) Once upon a time a Brahman was passing along the road, and seeing a dog sleeping there, struck at it with his bludgeon and broke its back. The dog went to the Court of Ramachandrs and made his complaint against the Brahman. When the king called on him to make his defence, he said :-"It is true I struck the dog and yet I did not intend to hurt it so severely. Further, had I not struck it when it was lying on the road, it might have bitten someone who stumbled against it. Thus I acted for the public good and I am blameless."
The Raja consulted his ministers and they said =
“The Brahman is surely to blame, but it is a rule of the State that no heavy punishment shall be inflicted on a Brahman. It is best that the dog be asked to fix the penalty. So shall we be free from blame."
Ramachandra asked the dog what punishment should be awarded to the Brahman, and he said :-"Give him a number of villages and let him become the head of a monastery and escort him to his new charge on an elephant."
“But " said the Raja," this is no punishment at all."
" It is the greatest punishment in the world," said the dog, "and I will tell you why. I was in my former life a Brahman, and this Brahman was a Mathdhari Atith or abbot of a monastery. One day I was sitting with him, and the time came for him to cook his food. He sat down to cook in the sacred cooking square, but he had forgotten the ghi, and he asked me to bring him some. I went up and took out a little ghi with my finger and brought it to him. Then I went home and bathed, but a little morsel of the ghi stuck inside the point of my nail, and when I was eating, it went down my throat. This so defiled me that when I came before Yama Raja, the Lord of the dead, he ordered that I should for one thousand successive births be reborn as a dog. The same will be the fate of this cruel Brahman and he will be reborn a dog for a thousand births." . So Ramachandra was convinced and awarded the Brahman the punishment assigned by the dog.
[The tale curiously illustrates the abhorrence felt by Brahmans for the class of so-called Ascetics who live worldly lives as the heads of monasteries.-ED.)
