Chapter 20
So they went away very sorrowful, and wandered for a whole week, and all the time they had no food, till they came to another country whose Rájá, Rájá Bhoj, was one of their friends. Rájá Bhoj received them very kindly. "What has brought you to this state? How is it you are so poor?" he said. "What has happened to you?" "It is God's will," they answered. Rájá Bhoj gave them a beautiful room to live in, and told his servants to cook for them the very nicest dinner they could. This the servants did, and they brought the dinner into Rájá Harichand's room, and set it before him and left him. Then he and the Rání put some of the food on their plates; but before they could eat anything, the food both in the dishes and on their plates became full of maggots. So they could not eat it. They felt greatly humbled. However, they said nothing, but worshipped God; and they buried all the food in a hole they dug in the floor of their room.
Now the daughter of Rájá Bhoj had left her gold necklace hanging on the wall of the room in which were Rájá Harichand and the Rání Báhan. At night when Rájá Harichand was asleep, the Rání saw a crack come in the wall and the necklace go of itself into the crack; then the wall joined together as before. She at once woke her husband, and told him what she had seen. "We had better go away quickly," she said. "The necklace will not be found to-morrow, and Rájá Bhoj will think we are thieves. It will be useless breaking the wall open to find it." The Rájá got up at once, and they set out again. Rájá Bhoj, when the necklace was not found, thought Rájá Harichand and the Rání Báhan had stolen it.
They wandered on till they came to a country belonging to another friend, called Rájá Nal, but they were ashamed to go to his palace. The three weeks were now nearly over, only two more days were left. So the Rání said, "In two days we shall be able to eat. Go into the jungle and cut grass, and sell it in the bazar. We shall thus get a few pice and be able to buy a little food." The Rájá went out to the jungle, but he had to break and pull up the grass with his hands. He worked half the day, and then sold the grass in the bazar for a few pice. They were able to buy food, and worshipped God and cooked it; and as the three weeks were now over they were allowed to eat it.
They stayed in Rájá Nal's country, and lived in a little house they hired in the bazar. Rájá Harichand went out every day to the jungle for grass, which he pulled up or broke off with his hands, and then sold in the bazar for a few pice. The Rání saved a pice or two whenever she could, and at the end of two years they were rich enough to buy a hook such as grass-cutters use. The Rájá could now cut more grass, and soon the Rání was able to buy some pretty-coloured silks in the bazar.
Her husband went daily to cut grass, and she sat at home making head-collars with the silks for horses. Four years after they had bought the hook, she had four of these head-collars ready, and she took them up to Rájá Nal's palace to sell. It was the first time she had gone there, for she and her husband were ashamed to see Rájá Nal. Their fakírs' dresses had become rags, and they had only been able to get wretched common clothes in their place, for they were miserably poor.
"What beautiful head-collars these are!" said Rájá Nal's coachmen and grooms; and they took them to show to their Rájá. As soon as he saw them he said, "Where did you get these head-collars? Who is it that wishes to sell them?" for he knew that only one woman could make such head-collars, and that woman was the Rání Báhan. "A very poor woman brought them here just now," they answered. "Bring her to me," said Rájá Nal. So the servants brought him Rání Báhan, and when she saw the Rájá she burst into tears. "What has brought you to this state? Why are you so poor?" said Rájá Nal. "It is God's will," she answered. "Where is your husband?" he asked. "He is cutting grass in the jungle," she said. Rájá Nal called his servants and said, "Go into the jungle, and there you will see a man cutting grass. Bring him to me." When Rájá Harichand saw Rájá Nal's servants coming to him, he was very much frightened; but the servants took him and brought him to the palace. As soon as Rájá Nal saw his old friend, he seized his hands, and burst out crying. "Rájá," he said, "what has brought you to this state?" "It is God's will," said Rájá Harichand.
Rájá Nal was very good to them. He gave them a palace to live in, and servants to wait on them; beautiful clothes to wear, and good food to eat. He went with them to the palace to see that everything was as it should be for them. "To-day," he said to the Rání, "I shall dine with your husband, and you must give me a dinner cooked just as you used to cook one for me when I went to see you in your own country." "Good, I will give it you," said the Rání; but she was quite frightened, for she thought, "The Rájá is so kind, and everything is so comfortable for us, that I am sure something dreadful will happen." However, she prepared the dinner, and told the servants how to cook it and serve it; but first she worshipped God, and entreated him to have mercy on her and her husband. The dinner was very good, and nothing evil happened to any one. They lived in the palace Rájá Nal gave them for four and a half years.
Meanwhile the farmers in Rájá Harichand's country had all these years gone on ploughing and turning up the land, although not a drop of rain had fallen all that time, and the earth was hard and dry. Now just when the Rájá and Rání had lived in Rájá Nal's palace for four and a half years Mahádeo was walking through Rájá Harichand's country. He saw the farmers digging up the ground, and said, "What is the good of your digging and turning up the ground? Not a drop of rain is going to fall." "No," said the farmers, "but if we did not go on ploughing and digging, we should forget how to do our work." They did not know they were talking to Mahádeo, for he looked like a man. "That is true," said Mahádeo, and he thought, "The farmers speak the truth; and if I go on neglecting to blow on my horn, I shall forget how to blow on it at all." So he took his deer's horn, which was just like those some yogís use, and blew on it. Now when Rájá Harichand had chosen the twelve years' famine, God had said, "Rain shall not fall on Rájá Harichand's country till Mahádeo blows his horn in it." Mahádeo had quite forgotten this decree; so he blew on his horn, although only ten and a half years' famine had gone by. The moment he blew, down came the rain, and the whole country at once became as it had been before the famine began; and moreover, the moment it rained, everything in Rájá Harichand's palace became what it was before the angels entered it. All the men and women came to life again; so did all the animals; and the gold and silver were no longer charcoal, but once more gold and silver. God was not angry with Mahádeo for forgetting that he said the famine should last for twelve years, and that the rain should fall when Mahádeo blew on his horn in Rájá Harichand's country. "If it pleased Mahádeo to blow on his horn," said God, "it does not matter that eighteen months of famine were still to last." As soon as they heard the rain had fallen, all the ryots who had gone to other countries on account of the famine returned to Rájá Harichand's country.
Among the Rájá's servants was the kotwál, and very anxious he was, when he came to life again, to find the Rájá and Rání; only he did not know how to do so, and wondered where he had best seek for them.
Meanwhile the Rání Báhan had a dream that God sent her, in which an angel said to her, "It is good that you and your husband should return to your country." She told this dream to her husband; and Rájá Nal gave them horses, elephants, and camels, that they might travel like Rájás to their home, and he went with them. They found everything in order in their own palace and all through their country, and after this lived very happily in it. But the Rání said to Rájá Harichand, "If you had only done what I told you, and said you would give me to the fakír, all this misery would not have come on us."
Later they went to stay again with Rájá Bhoj, and slept in the same room as they had had when they came to him poor and wretched. In the night they saw the wall open, and the necklace came out of the crack and hung itself up as before, and the wall closed again. The next day they showed the necklace to Rájá Bhoj, saying, "It was on account of this necklace that we ran away from you the last time we were here," and they told him all that had happened to it.
As for Gangá Télí, they never went near him again.
Told by Múniyá, March 4th, 1879.
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[Decoration]
XXX.
THE KING'S SON AND THE WAZÍR'S DAUGHTER.
In a country there was a great king who had a wazír. One day he thought he should like to play at cards with this wazír, and he told him to go and get some for him, and then play a game with him. So the wazír brought the cards, and he and the king sat down to play. Now neither the king nor the wazír had any children; and as they were playing, the king said, "Wazír, if I have a son and you have a daughter, or if I have a daughter and you have a son, let us marry our children to each other." To this the wazír agreed. A year after the king had a son; and when the boy was two years old, the wazír had a daughter. Some years passed, and the king's son was twelve years old, and the wazír's daughter ten. Then the king said to the wazír, "Do you remember how one day, when we were playing at cards, we agreed to marry our children to each other?" "I remember," said the wazír. "Let us marry them now," said the king. So they held the wedding feast; but the wazír's little daughter remained in her father's house because she was still so young.
As the king's son grew older he became very wicked, and took to gambling and drinking till his father and mother died of grief. After their death he went on in the same way, gambling and drinking, until he had no money left, and had to leave the palace, and live anywhere he could in the town, wandering from house to house in a fakír's dress, begging his bread, and sleeping wherever he found a spot on which to lie down.
Meanwhile the wazír's daughter was living alone, for her husband had never come to fetch her as he should have done when she was old enough. Her father and mother were dead too. She had given half of the money they left her to the poor, and she lived on the other half. She spent her days in praying to God, and in reading in a holy book; and though she was so young, she was very wise and good.
One day, as the prince was roaming about in his fakír's rags, not knowing where to find food or shelter, he remembered his wife, and thought he would go and see her. She ordered her servants to give him good food, a bath, and good clothes; "for," she said, "we were married when we were children, though he never fetched me to his palace." The servants did as she bade them. The prince bathed and dressed, and ate food, and he wished to stay with his wife. But she said, "No; before you stay with me you must see four sights. Go out in the jungle and walk for a whole week. Then you will come to a plain where you will see them." So the next day he set out for the plain, and reached it in one week.
There he saw a large tank. At one corner of the tank he saw a man and a woman who had good clothes, good food, good beds, and servants to wait on them, and seemed very happy. At the second corner he saw a wretchedly poor man and his wife, who did nothing but cry and sob because they had no food to eat, no water to drink, no bed to lie on, no one to take care of them. At the third corner he saw two little fishes that were always going up and down in the air. They would shoot down close to the water, but they could not go into it or stay in it; then they would make a salaam to God, and would shoot up again into the air, but before they got very high, they had to drop down again. At the fourth corner he saw a huge demon who was heating sand in an enormous iron pot, under which he kept up a big fire.
The prince returned to his wife, and told her all he had seen. "Do you know who the happy man and woman are?" she said. "No," he answered. "They are my father and mother," she said. "When they were alive, I was good to them, and since their death I gave half their money to the poor; and on the other half I have lived quietly, and tried to be good. So God is pleased with them, and makes them happy." "Is that true?" said her husband. "Quite true," she said. "And the miserable man and woman who did nothing but cry, do you know who they are?" "No," said the prince. "They are your father and mother. When they were alive, you gambled and drank; and they died of grief. Then you went on gambling and drinking till you had spent all their money. So now God is angry with them, and will not make them happy." "Is that true?" said the prince. "Quite true," she said. "And the fishes you saw were the two little children we should have had if you had taken me to your home as your wife. Now they cannot be born, for they can find no bodies in which to be born; so God has ordered them to rise and sink in the air in these fishes' forms." "Is that true?" asked the prince. "Quite true," she answered. "And by God's order the demon you saw is heating that sand in the big iron pot for you, because you are such a wicked man."
The moment she had told all this to her husband, she died. But he did not get any better. He gambled and drank all her money away, and lived a wretched life, wandering about like a fakír till his death.
Told by Múniyá, March 8th, 1879.
[Decoration]
NOTES.
INTRODUCTORY.
In these stories the word translated God, is _Khudá_. Excepting in "How king Burtal became a Fakír" (p. 85), and in "Rájá Harichand's Punishment" (p. 224), in which Mahádeo plays a part, the tellers of these tales would never specify by name the god they spoke of. He was always _Khudá_, "the great _Khudá_ who lives up there in the sky." In this they differed from the narrator of the _Old Deccan Days_ stories, who almost always gives her gods and goddesses their Hindú names--probably because, from being a Christian, she had no religious scruples to deter her from so doing.
When the heroes of these stories are called Rájás, the word Rájá has been kept: when they are called Bádsháhs, we have called them kings. The Ayahs say, "A Bádsháh is a much greater man than a Rájá." When _bádsháh_ (the Persian _pádisháh_) in its corrupted form of _básá_ is tacked on to a proper name, such as _Anár_ (_Anárbásá_), _Hírálál_ (_Hírálálbásá_), the _básá_ has been preserved, because, Dunkní says, in these cases _básá_ is no longer a title, but part of the proper name.
Old Múniyá tells her stories with the solemn, authoritative air of a professor. She sits quite still on the floor, and uses no gestures. Dunkní gets thoroughly excited over her tales, marches up and down the room, acting her stories, as it were. For instance, in describing the thickness of Mahádeo's hair in King Burtal's story, she put her two thumbs to her ears, and spread out all her fingers from her head saying, "His hair stood out like this," and in "Loving Lailí," after moving her hand as if she were pulling the magic knife from her pocket and unfolding it, she swung her arm out at full length with great energy, and then she said, "Lailí made one 'touch'" (here she brought back the edge of her hand to her own throat), "and the head fell off." Dunkní sometimes used an English word, such as the "touch" in the present case.
All these stories were read back in Hindústání by my little girl to the tellers at the time of telling, and nearly all a second time by me this winter before printing. I never saw people more anxious to have their tales retold exactly than are Dunkní and Múniyá. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be _thík_ (exact) was it sent to the press.
It is strange in these Indian tales to meet golden-haired, fair-complexioned heroes and heroines. Mr. Thornton tells me that in the Panjáb when one native speaks of another with contempt, he says, "he is a black man," _ek kálá ádmí hai_. Sir Neville Chamberlain tells me that if you wish to praise a native for his valour and brave conduct, you say to him, "Your countenance is red," or "your cheeks are red," and that nothing is worse than to tell him his "face is black." And this is what Mr. Boxwell says about the expression "kálá ádmí" and our fairy tales:--
"The stories are of the Aryan conquerors from beyond the Indus; distinguished by their fair skin from the dark aborigines of India. In Vedic times Var[n.]a, 'colour,' is used for stock or blood, as the Latins used Nomen. It is in India 'Yas Dásam var[n.]am adharam guhákar.' 'Who sank in darkness the Barbarian colour.' R. V. II. 4.
"Indra, again, 'Hatvé Dasyún pra Áryam var[n.]am ávat.' 'Having slain the Barbarians, helped the Aryan colour.' R. V. III. 34.
"Again, in K. V. I. 104. They pray--
"'Te nas ávaksa suvitáya var[n.]am.' 'May they bring our colour to success.'
"In later times 'var[n.]a' is the regular word for caste; and the Brahmins and the rest of the twice-born who still represent the Aryan var[n.]a are much fairer than the Çúdras and Hill people.
"In the Ikhwán ussafa the black skin is one of the results of the Fall to Adam and Hawa.
"'Áftáb ki garmí se rang mutaghaiyar aur siáh ho gayá.' 'From the heat of the sun their colour became changed and black.'"
But I think the fact that the conquering races that invaded India from the north were fair and ruddier than the aborigines, and that their descendants, the high-caste natives, are to this day fairer than the aborigines, though it explains the phrases, "he is only a black man," and "your cheeks are red," does not account for the golden hair and fair skin of so many of our princes and princesses. I believe that they all owe their characteristics to the fact that such are the characteristics of the solar hero, although they cannot all lay claim to a solar origin for themselves. For this golden hair and white skin, at first the property of the shining sun-hero alone, would naturally in the course of time be given to other Indian folk-lore heroes on whose beauty and brightness it was necessary to lay a stress. Prince Majnún, for instance, certainly has nothing solar about him, yet his hair is described as red. Dunkní, in answer to a half incredulous, half inquiring exclamation of mine when I heard this, asserted, "Red! yes, it was red: red like gold."
The black-haired Maoris give their sea-nymphs yellow hair (_Old New Zealand_, p. 19); and Sir George Grey in his _Polynesian Mythology_, p. 295, writes thus of the Maori fairies: "Their appearance is that of human beings, nearly resembling an European's; their hair being very fair, and so is their skin. They are very different from the Maoris, and do not resemble them at all." But as the Maoris do not seem to have any myths of golden-haired solar heroes, these peculiarities of hair and complexion cannot be referred to the same cause as those of my little daughter's Indian princes and princesses.
I.--PHÚLMATI RÁNÍ.
1. Phúlmati is a garden rose, not a wild rose. It must be a local name for the flower. I can find it in no dictionary. Dunkní says her heroine was named after a pink rose.
2. She has hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahúran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahrí Rání, p. 54, Jahúr Rání, p. 93, Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása, Notes, p. 253. Also, Híra Bai, the cobra's daughter in _Old Deccan Days_, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to the ground--see Naake's _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, p. 100. And devils being fallen heroes or angels, the following references may be made to them. In Haltrich's _Siebenbuergische Maerchen_, p. 171, in "Die beiden Fleischhauer in der Hoelle," the devil's grandmother gives the good brother a hair that had fallen from the devil's head while he slept. The man carries it home and the hair suddenly becomes as big as a "Heubaum" and is "of pure gold." Also in one of Grimm's stories the hero is sent to fetch three golden hairs from the devil's head--see _Kinder und Hausmaerchen_, vol. I. p. 175, "Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren."
3. Her beauty lights up a dark room. In this shining quality she resembles many Asiatic and European fairy-tale heroes and heroines. See in this book Hírálí, whose face shone like a diamond, p. 69; and the Princess Labám, who shone like the moon, and her beauty made night day, p. 158. In _Old Deccan Days_, p. 156, the prince's dead body on the hedge of spears dazzles those who look at it till they can hardly see. Pánch Phúl Rání, p. 140, shines in the dark jungle like a star. So does the princess in Chundun Rájá's dark tomb, p. 229. In a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_ for February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54, the dream-nymph, Tillottama, whenever she appears, lights up the whole place with her beauty. "At every breath she drew when she slept, a flame like a flower issued from her nostril, and when she drew in her breath the flower of flame was again withdrawn." Her beauty lit up her house "as if by lightning." See Appendix _A_. In Naake's _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, p. 96, is the Bohemian tale quoted above of Princess Golden-Hair. "Every morning at break of day she [the princess] combs her golden locks; its brightness is reflected in the sea, and up among the clouds," p. 102. When she let it down "it was bright as the rising sun," and almost blinded Irik with its radiance, p. 107. The golden children (Schott's _Wallachische Maerchen_, p. 125) shine in the darkened room "like the morning sun in May." Gubernatis in the 2nd vol. of his _Zoological Mythology_, mentions at p. 31 a golden boy who figures in one of Afanassieff's stories; when this child's body is uncovered on his restoration to his father, "all the room shines with light." And at p. 57 of the same volume he quotes another of Afanassieff's stories, in which the persecuted princess has three sons "who light up whatever is near them with their splendour." Of Gerd in Jötunheim, the beautiful giant maiden with the bright shining arms, Thorpe says (_Northern Mythology_, vol. I. p. 47), when she raised "her arms to open the door, both air and water gave such a reflection that the whole world was illumined." The boar Trwyth (who was once a king, but because of his sons was turned into a boar) after his fall preserves some of his old kingly splendour; for "his bristles were like silver wire, and whether he went through the wood or through the plain he was to be traced by the glittering of his bristles" (_Mabinogion_, vol. II. p. 310). In the same work (vol. III. p. 279), in "The Dream of Maxen Wledig," is a maiden, of whom it is told: "Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty." And in "Goldhaar" (Haltrich's _Siebenbuergische Maerchen_, p. 61) when the hero's cap fell off he stood there "in all splendour and his golden locks fell round his head, and he shone like the sun."
In a Santhali tale published by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the _Indian Antiquary_ for January 1875, p. 10, called "Toria the Goatherd and the Daughter of the Sun," a beggar's eyes are as dazzled by the Sun's daughter's beauty "as if he had stared at the sun."