Folklore of the Santal Parganas - Cecil Henry Bompas (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📗

bathe at the common place but went to a

place apart; then having eaten his lunch he continued his journey,

but he had not gone far when he found that he had left his purse

behind, so he turned back and found it lying at the place where he

had put down his things when he bathed; thereupon he applauded the

wisdom of his teacher, for if he had bathed at the common bathing

place someone would have seen the purse and have taken it away. When

evening came on he turned into a village and asked the headman to let

him sleep in his verandah, and there was already one other traveller

sleeping there and in the morning it was found that the traveller had

died in his sleep. Then the headman consulted the villagers and they

decided that there was nothing to be done but to throw away the body,

and that as the Prince was also a traveller he should do it. At first

he refused to touch the corpse as he was the son of a Raja, but the

villagers insisted and then he bethought himself of the maxim that

he should not act contrary to the general opinion; so he yielded and

dragged away the body, and threw it into a ravine.

 

Before leaving it he remembered that it was proper to remove the

clothes, and when he began to do so he found round the waist of the

body a roll of coin; so he took this and was glad that he had followed

the advice of his teacher.

 

That evening he reached the boundary of his own territory and decided

to press on home although it was dark; at midnight he reached the

palace and without arousing anyone went to the door of his wife's

room. Outside the door he saw a pair of shoes and a sword; at the

sight he became wild with rage and drawing the sword he called out:

"Who is in my room?"

 

As a matter of fact the Prince's wife had got the Prince's little

sister to sleep with her, and when the girl heard the Prince's voice

she got up to leave; but when she opened the door and saw the Prince

standing with the drawn sword she drew back in fear; she told him

who she was and explained that they had put the shoes and sword at

the door to prevent anyone else from entering; but in his wrath the

Prince would not listen and called to her to come out and be killed.

 

Then she took off her cloth and showed it to him through the crack of

the door and at the sight of this he was convinced; then he reflected

on the advice of his teacher and repented, because he had nearly

killed his sister through not restraining his wrath.

XV. (The Monkey Boy.)

 

There was once a man who had six sons and two daughters and he died

leaving his wife pregnant of a ninth child.

 

And when the child was born it proved to be a monkey.

 

The villagers and relations advised the mother to make away with it,

but she refused saying "Chando knows why he has given me such a child,

but as he has done so I will rear it."

 

All her relations said that if she chose to rear a monkey they would

turn her out of the family. However she persisted that she would do

so at all costs. So they sent her to live with her child in a hut

outside the village, and the monkey boy grew up and learned to talk

like a human being.

 

One day his elder brothers began to clear the jungle for cultivation

and the monkey boy took a hatchet and went with them; he asked where

he could clear land for himself and in fun they showed him the place

where the jungle was thickest. So he went there and drove his hatchet

into the trunk of a tree and then returned and watched his brothers

working hard clearing the scrub, and when they had finished their work

he went and fetched his hatchet and returned home with them. Every

day he did the same--and one day his brothers asked why he spent all

his time with them, but he said that he only came to them when he was

tired of cutting down trees; they laughed at this and said that they

would like to see his clearing, so he took them to the place and to

their astonishment they saw a large clearing, bigger than they had

been able to make for themselves. Then the brothers burnt the jungle

they had cut down and began to plough the land.

 

But the monkey boy's mother had no plough or cattle nor any seed rice;

the only thing in the house was a pumpkin, so he took the seed out

of the pumpkin and sowed it in his clearing. His brothers asked what

he had sown and he told them--Rice.

 

The brothers ploughed and sowed and used to go daily to watch the

growing crop, and one day they went to have a look at the monkey boy's

crop and they saw that it was pumpkins and not rice and they laughed

at him. When their crop was ripe the brothers prepared to offer the

first fruits and the monkey boy watched them that he might observe the

same ceremonies as they. One day they brought home the first fruits

and offered them to the _bongas_, and they invited the monkey boy

and his mother to come to the feast which followed the offering.

 

They both went and enjoyed themselves; and two or three days later

the monkey boy said that he would also have a feast of first fruits,

so he told his mother to clear the courtyard and invited his brothers

and he purified himself and went to his clearing and brought home the

biggest pumpkin that had grown there; this he offered to the spirits;

he sliced off the top of it as if it were the head of a fowl, and

as he did so he saw that the inside was full of rice; he called his

mother and they filled a winnowing fan with the rice and there was

enough besides to nearly fill a basket; they were delighted at this

windfall but kept the matter secret lest they should be robbed. The

monkey boy told his mother to be sure and cook enough rice so that

his brothers and their wives might have as much as ever they could

eat, and not merely a small helping such as they had given him,

and if necessary he would go and fetch another pumpkin; so his

mother boiled the rice. When the time fixed for the feast came,

nothing was to be seen of the brothers because they did not expect

that there would really be anything for them to eat; so the monkey

boy went and fetched them, and when they came to the feast they

were astonished to have as much rice as they could eat. When the

crop was quite ripe the monkey boy gathered all the pumpkins and

got sufficient rice from them to last for the whole year. After

this the brothers went out to buy horses, and the monkey boy went

with them and as he had no money he took nothing but a coil of rope;

his brothers were ashamed to have him with them and drove him away,

so he went on ahead and got first to the place where the horsedealer

lived. The brothers arrived late in the evening and decided to make

their purchases the following morning and ride their horses home, so

they camped for the night. The monkey boy spent the night hiding on

the rafters of the stable; and in the night the horses began to talk

to each other and discussed which could gallop farthest, and one mare

said "I can gallop twelve _kos_ on the ground and then twelve _kos_

in the air." When the monkey boy heard this he got down and lamed

the mare by running a splinter into her hoof. The next morning the

brothers bought the horses which pleased them and rode off. Then the

monkey boy went to the horsedealer and asked why the mare was lame

and advised him to apply remedies. But the dealer said that that

was useless: when horses got ill they always died; then the monkey

boy asked if he would sell the mare and offered to give the coil of

rope in exchange; the dealer, thinking that the animal was useless,

agreed, so the monkey boy led it away, but when he was out of sight

he took out the splinter and the lameness at once ceased. Then he

mounted the mare and rode after his brothers, and when he had nearly

overtaken them he rose into the air and flew past his brothers and

arrived first at home. There he tied up the mare outside his house

and went and bathed and had his dinner and waited for his brothers.

 

They did not arrive for a full hour afterwards and when they saw

the monkey boy and his mount they wanted to know how he had got home

first. He boasted of how swift his mare was and so they arranged to

have a race and match their horses against his. The race took place

two or three days later and the monkey boy's mare easily beat all the

other horses, she gallopped twelve _kos_ on the ground and twelve

_kos_ in the air. Then they wanted to change their horses for his,

but he said they had had first choice and he was not going to change.

 

In two or three years the monkey boy became rich and then he announced

that he wanted to marry; this puzzled his mother for she thought that

no human girl would marry him while a monkey would not be able to talk;

so she told him that he must find a bride for himself. One day he set

off to look for a wife and came to a tank in which some girls were

bathing, and he took up the cloth belonging to one of them and ran

up a tree with it, and when the girl missed it and saw it hanging

down from the tree she borrowed a cloth from her friends and went

and asked the monkey boy for her own; he told her that she could only

have it back if she consented to marry him; she was surprised to find

that he could talk and as he conversed she was bewitched by him and

let him pull her up into the tree by her hair, and she called out to

her friends to go home and leave her where she was. Then he took her

on his back and ran off home with her.

 

The girl's father and relations turned out with bows and arrows to

look for the monkey who had carried her off but he had gone so far

away that they never found him. When the monkey boy appeared with his

bride all the villagers were astonished that he had found anyone to

marry him, but everything was made ready for the marriage as quickly

as possible and all the relations were invited and the wedding took

place and the monkey boy and his wife lived happily ever after.

XVI. (The Miser's