Folklore of the Santal Parganas Part 12

LIII. The Child with the Ears of an Ox.

Once upon a time a son was born to a certain Raja and the child had the ears of an ox. The Raja was very much ashamed and let no one know. But the secret could not be kept from the barber who had to perform the ceremony of shaving the child's head. However the Raja made the barber vow not to tell anyone of what he had seen.

So the barber went away, but the secret which he might not tell had an unfortunate effect; it made his stomach swell to an enormous size. As the barber went along in this unhappy condition he met a Dom who asked why his stomach was so swollen. The barber said that it was because he had shaved the Raja's child and had seen that it had the ears of an ox. Directly he had broken his vow and blurted out the secret, his stomach returned to its usual size.

The Dom went his way and cut down a tree and made a drum out of the wood, and went about playing on the drum and begging. He came to the Raja's palace and there he drummed and sang:--

"The son of the Raja Has the ears of an ox."

When the Raja heard this, he was very angry, and swore to punish the barber who must have broken his vow. But the Dom a.s.sured the Raja that he knew nothing about the matter; that it was the drum that sang the words and not he and that he had no idea what they meant. So the Raja was pacified and gave the Dom a present and sent him away and the barber was not punished.

LIV. The Child Who Knew His Father.

Once upon a time there was a girl whose parents took the greatest care that she should not be familiar with any of the young men of the village. But in spite of their precautions she formed an intimacy with a young man and was presently found to be with child. When this became known the villagers held a panchayat to enquire into the matter, but the girl flatly declined to give any information and her father and brothers were unable to point out the offender. So the village elders decided to let the matter stand over till the child was born.

When the birth took place the question arose in whose name its head should be shaved; as its father was still unknown, the villagers decided that this should be settled when the child was old enough to talk. So when the child was two or three years old and could prattle a little, the girl's father went to the headman and _paranic_ and asked them what was to be done. They said that he must pay a fine to them and another to the villagers, because he had made the village unclean for so long, and give a feast to the villagers and then they would find out the father of the child and make him marry the girl; and if he refused to do this, he would be outcasted. The unfortunate man agreed and then the _jog manjhi_ and _G.o.det_ were sent to call all the men of the neighbourhood to a meeting.

They a.s.sembled in their best clothes and pagris and sat down in rows, and in the middle a circle was drawn on the ground; then prayers were offered to Chando and the child was set in the circle and told to find its father. The child began to walk slowly along the lines of men but it did not stop till it came to its real father, who was sitting a little apart, and then it threw itself into his arms. Thus the truth was discovered and the man married the girl and, as he was very poor, went to live in his father-in-law's house.

LV. Jogeshwar's Marriage.

Once upon a time there was a young man of the weaver caste, named Jogeshwar. He was an orphan and lived all alone. One summer he planted a field of pumpkins on the sandy bed of a river. The plants grew well and bore plenty of fruit: but when the pumpkins were ripe, a jackal found them out and went every night and feasted on them. Jogeshwar soon found out from the foot-marks who was doing the damage; so he set a snare and a few days later found the jackal caught in it. He took a stick to beat its life out, but the jackal cried: "Spare me and I will find you a wife." So Jogeshwar stayed his hand and released the jackal who promised at once to set off about the business.

The jackal kept his word and went to a city where a Raja lived. There he sat down on the bank of one of the Raja's tanks. To this tank the servants from the palace brought the pots and dishes to be washed, and to this tank also came the Rani and princesses to bathe. Whenever the servants came to wash their dishes, the jackal kept on repeating: "What sort of a Raja is this whose plates are washed in water in which people have bathed? there is no Raja like Raja Jogeshwar: he eats of golden plates and yet he never uses them a second time but throws them away directly he has eaten off them once."

The servants soon carried word to the Raja of the jackal who sat by the tank and of his story of Raja Jogeshwar. Then the Raja sent for the jackal and asked why he had come: the jackal answered that he was looking for a bride for Raja Jogeshwar. Now the Raja had three or four daughters and he thought that he saw his way to a fine match for one of them. So he sent for the young women and asked the jackal to say whether one of them would be a suitable bride for Raja Jogeshwar. The jackal chose the second sister and said that he would go and get the consent of Raja Jogeshwar.

The jackal hurried back and told the astonished weaver that he had found a Raja's daughter for him to marry. Jogeshwar had nothing to delay him and only asked that an early day might be fixed for the wedding. So the jackal went back to the Raja and received from him the knotted string that fixed the date of the wedding.

The jackal had now to devise some means by which Jogeshwar could go through the wedding ceremonies without his poverty being found out. He first went to the Raja and asked how many attendants Raja Jogeshwar should bring with him, as he did not want to bring more than the bride's father could entertain. The Raja was too proud to fix any number and said they could bring as many as they liked.

Jogeshwar having no relations and no money, was quite unable to arrange for a grand procession to escort him; he could only just afford to hire a palki in which to be carried to the bride's house; so the jackal sent word to all the jackals and paddy birds of the neighbourhood to come to a feast at the palace of the bride, an invitation which was eagerly accepted. At the time fixed they started off, with all the paddy birds riding on the backs of the jackals. When they came within sight of the palace, the jackal ran on ahead and invited the Raja to come out and look at the procession as there was still time to send them back, if they were too many, but it would be a great disgrace if they were allowed to arrive and find no entertainment. The Raja went out to look and when he saw the procession stretching away for a distance of two miles or more with all the paddy birds looking like white hors.e.m.e.n as they rode on the backs of the jackals, his heart failed him and he begged the jackal to send them away, as he could not entertain such a host.

So then the jackal hurried back and turned them all away and Jogeshwar reached the palace, accompanied only by his palki bearers.

Before the wedding feast, the jackal gave Jogeshwar some hints as to his behaviour. He warned him that three of four kinds of meat and vegetables would be handed round with the rice, and bade him to be sure to help himself from each dish--of course in his own house the poor weaver had never had more than one dish to eat with his rice--and when _pan_ was handed to him after the feast he was not to take any until he had a handful of money given him; by such behaviour he would lead every one to think that he was really a prince. Jogeshwar did exactly as he was told and was thought a very grand personage.

The next evening Jogeshwar set off homewards with his bride, the bride's brothers and attendants accompanying them. They travelled on and on till the bride's party began to grow tired and kept asking the jackal how much further they had to go. The jackal kept on putting them off, till at last they came in sight of a grove of palm trees, and he told them that Raja Jogeshwar's palace stood among the palm trees but was so old and weather worn that it could not be seen from a distance.

When they reached the palm grove and found nothing but Jogeshwar's humble hut, the bride's brothers turned on the jackal and asked what he meant by deceiving them. The jackal protested that he had told no lies: the weaver ate every day off plates made of dry leaves and threw them away when done with and that was all he meant when he talked of golden plates. At this excuse they turned on him and wanted to beat him, but he ran away and escaped.

The bride's friends went back and told the Raja how things had turned out and as divorce was not lawful for them, the Raja could only send for his daughter and her husband and give them an estate to live on.

LVI. The Strong Man.

There was once a Strong man but no one knew of his strength. He was in the service of a farmer who made him headman over all his labourers. In those days much of the country was still covered with jungle. One day the farmer chose a piece of forest land which he thought suitable for cultivation and told his labourers to set to work and clear it, and as usual after giving his orders he troubled himself no more about the matter, as he could fully rely on the Strong man.

The next morning, the Strong man set the other labourers to work ploughing a field and then said that he would go and have a look at the jungle which his master wanted cleared. So he went off alone with only a stick in his hand. When he reached the place, he walked all round it, and saw how much could be made into good arable land, and then he began to clear it. He pulled up the trees by the roots and piled them into a heap and he took the rocks and threw them to one side and made the ground quite clear and smooth, and then went back to the house. On being asked why he had been so long away, he answered that he had been pulling up a few bushes at the place which was to be cleared.

The following morning the Strong man told the farm labourers to take their ploughs to the clearing and begin to plough it. When the farmer heard this, he was puzzled to think how the land could be ready for ploughing so soon, and went to see it and to his amazement found the whole land cleared, every tree pulled up by the roots and all the rocks removed.

Then he asked the Strong man whether he had done the work by himself. The Strong man answered "no," a number of people had volunteered to help him and so the work had been finished in a day.

The farmer said nothing but he did not believe the story and saw that his servant must really be a man of marvellous strength. Neither he nor the farm labourers let any one else know what had happened, they kept it to themselves.

Now the Strong man's wages were twelve measures of rice a year. After working for four years he made up his mind to leave his master and start farming on his own account. So he told the farmer that he wished to leave but offered to finish any work there was to do before he went, that no one might be able to say that he had gone away, leaving his work half done. The farmer a.s.sured him that there was nothing for him to do and gave him rice equal to his four years' wages. The rice made two big _bandis_, each more than an ordinary man could lift, but the Strong man slung them on to a bamboo and carried them off over his shoulder.

After he had gone a little way, it struck the farmer that it would not do to let him display his strength in this way and that it would be better if he took the rice away at night. So he had the Strong man called back and told him that there was one job which he had forgotten to finish; he had put two bundles of sahai gra.s.s into the trough to steep and had forgotten to twist it into string. Without a word the Strong man wait and picked the _sabai_ out of the water and began to twist it, but he could tell at once by the feel that the _sabai_ had only just been placed in the water and he charged the farmer with playing a trick on him. The farmer swore that there was no trick and, rather than quarrel, the Strong man went on with the work.

While he was so engaged the farmer offered him some tobacco, and the Strong man took it without was.h.i.+ng and wiping his hands. Now no one should prepare or chew tobacco while twisting sabai; if one does not first wash and dry one's hands one's strength will go. The Strong man knew this, but he was so angry at being called back on false pretences that he forgot all about it.

But when he had finished the string and the farmer said that he might go, he essayed to take up the two _bandis_ of rice as before. To his sorrow he found that he could not lift them. Then he saw the mistake that he had made. He had to leave one _bandi_ behind and divide the other into two halves and sling them on the bamboo and carry them off with him.

The Strong man's cultivation did not prosper, and after three or four years he found himself at the end of his means and had again to take service with a farmer.

One day when field work was in full swing the Strong man had a quarrel with his new master. So when he had finished the morning's ploughing he pulled the iron point of the ploughshare out of its socket and snapped it in two. Then he took the pieces to his master and explained that it had caught on the stump of a tree and got broken. The master took the broken share to the blacksmith and had it mended. The next day the Strong man went through the same performance and his master had again to go the blacksmith. The same thing happened several days running, till at last the farmer decided to keep watch and see what really happened. So he hid himself and saw the Strong man snap the ploughshare in two; but in view of such a display of strength he was much too frightened to let his servant know that he had found out the trick that was being played on him. He took the pieces to the blacksmith as usual and at the smithy he found some of his friends and told them what had happened. They advised him to set the Strong man to twisting sabai string and then by some pretext induce him to take tobacco. The farmer did as they advised and in about a fortnight the Strong man lost all his strength and became as other men. Then his master dismissed him and he had to go back to his house and his strength never returned to him.

LVII. The Raja's Advice.

Once upon a time an aged Raja lay dying. Before he breathed his last he sent for his only son and gave him the following advice. "My son," he said, "never go on a journey alone; do not a.s.sociate with low people, for if you do no one will respect you; never confide a secret to your wife; do not tell outsiders the affairs of your house; do not let village affairs go beyond the village street, and never get into a rage."

The son succeeded to the Raja and shortly afterwards set out to pay a visit to his wife's relations. He started alone and after going some distance he remembered his father's injunctions never to go on a journey alone. He had gone too far to go back and he saw no one within call, so he looked about and presently found a crab hole. He set to work and dug out the crab and fixing it in his _pagri_ continued his journey.

By-and-bye he came to a river. Now in this river lived a crocodile, which had leagued with a crow to destroy travellers crossing the river. Whenever the crow saw anyone coming, it gave warning to the crocodile, and the crocodile then seized the traveller as he entered the river, while the crow pecked out his eyes. In this way they had been the death of many travellers. So when the crow saw the young Raja coming, it cawed to the crocodile, which hastened to the ford and seized the Raja as he stepped into the water, while the crow flew at his head. But the crab caught the crow by the leg and nipped it so hard that the crow, in agony, called out to the crocodile to let the man go, as it was being killed. So the crocodile released its hold and the Raja struggled to the bank, and then caught the crow which was held fast by the crab and wrung its neck. Then he went back home with the crab, reflecting on the wisdom of his father's advice.

Later on, the Raja thought that he would put another of his father's maxims to the proof and see what would happen if he told his wife a secret. So he took a spade and buried an old earthen pot in the corner of his garden. He let his wife see him and she promptly asked what he was burying; he put her off, but that night she insisted so much on knowing, that, after swearing her to secrecy, he told her that a child had come straying to his house and he had killed it to obtain good luck and had buried the body.

Time pa.s.sed, and one day the Raja had a quarrel with his wife, he began to beat her and she in return abused him and kept on calling out that he was a murderer, who had buried a child in his garden. Their next door neighbour heard all this and, directly she found the Raja's wife alone, asked whether what she said was true. The Raja's wife, being still in a pa.s.sion, a.s.serted that it was quite true. The story was soon all over the town, and the townspeople rose and seized the Raja and charged him with the murder. Then he took them to the garden and made them dig up what he had buried and they found only an old pot.

So they had to pay him compensation for making a false charge, and the Raja valued more than ever the advice given him by his father.