The Princess said, "This morning he went somewhere or other; he said
he will not come for a day or two."
After that, the Princes said, "No matter for that one; let us go away
home. We will take the things that are here."
The Princess said, "I will not." What of her saying, "I will not!" The
Princes, having taken all the [household] things that were there,
said to the Princess, "Let us go."
Afterwards the Princess through anger cut that child, and hung it
aloft, near the hearth. She placed the small pot on the hearth, and
taking a [piece of] muslin, all along the path tore and tore and threw
down pieces, until the time when they went to the house. Having gone
there, without eating she is crying and crying.
Then the Leopard came near the rock cave, and saw that the child
having been cut had been hung up; and having seen, also, that the
Princess was not there, came away.
Having come all along the path on which the muslin has been torn
and thrown down, and having come up to the house [in a human form];
he saw that the Princess is there. While the Leopard is in the open
space in front of the house, the Princess saw that the Leopard is
[there]; and having come laughing, and given water to the Leopard
to wash his face, and given sitting accommodation, and betel to eat,
she is cooking in order to give the Leopard to eat.
Then the Princes placed an earthen pot of water on the hearth, to
become heated. After it became heated, they cut a hole very deeply,
and put sticks on it, and above that leaves, and above that earth;
and having taken the pot of water and placed it there, they came near
the Leopard, and said to the Leopard, "Let us go, brother-in-law,
to bathe."
The Leopard said, "I cannot bathe, brother-in-law. As I was coming
I bathed; I cannot bathe another time."
While the Leopard was saying he could not, having gone calling the
Leopard they told him to place his feet at the place where those sticks
and leaves and earth have been put; and having told him to bend, they
poured that pot of boiling water on the Leopard's body. That one having
fallen into the hole that was cut deep, died. Those seven Princes
having thrown in earth and filled it up, came away and ate cooked rice.
That younger sister, having cooked and finished, seeks the
Leopard. While she is seeking him the sisters-in-law say,
"Sister-in-law, you eat that cooked rice. Elder brother is eating
cooked rice here."
The Princess is [there] without eating. While she is there the
sisters-in-law say again, "Sister-in-law, eat; elder brother is eating
cooked rice here. He will not come there, having become angry that
you have come [away]."
After that, the Princess came to look [for him]. Having looked at the
whole seven houses without finding the Leopard, she went to the place
where he bathed, and when she looked [saw that] earth was [newly]
cut and placed there.
Having seen it, thinking, "Here indeed having murdered him, this
earth has been cut and placed [over him]," she went into the house,
and did not eat; and having been weeping and weeping, and been two
or three days without food, the Princess died through very grief at
the loss of the Leopard.
The eight Princes and the seven Princesses, taking the Leopard's
goods and the Princess's goods, remained there.
North-western Province.
In The Indian Antiquary, vol. xiv, p. 135 ff. (Folklore in Southern
India, p. 116), in a Tamil story by Natesa Sastri, a girl who had
married and gone off with a tiger disguised in the form of a Brahmana
youth, escaped when her three brothers, in response to her request
sent by a crow, came to rescue her. She first tore in two the tiger
cub she had borne, and hung the pieces to roast over the fire. The
tiger followed in the form of a youth, was well received, and food
was cooked. On the pretext of giving him the customary oil bath
(of Southern India) before dining, the brothers put sticks across
the well, and laid mats over them. When the tiger-youth sat there
for the bath he fell into the well, which they filled with stones,
etc. The girl raised a pillar (apparently of mud) over the well,
with a tulasi (basil) plant at the top; and during the rest of her
life she smeared the pillar in the morning and evening with cow-dung,
and watered the plant.
In the Kolhan folk-tales (Bompas), appended to Folklore of the Santal
Parganas, p. 454, a tiger which assisted a Raja by carrying a load
of grass for him, received in marriage one of the Raja's daughters
as a recompense. He ate her, and when he went to ask for another in
her place, saying she had died, boiling water was poured over him
while he was asleep, and he was killed. At p. 470, a Raja married a
she-bear which took the place of his bride in her palankin; apparently
the bear had a human form.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 57, the concealed
pit-fall into which people fell is found. It was dug in one of the
rooms of a merchant's house. A King, his son, and his wife the Queen
were entrapped; but the King's daughter-in-law suspected some trick,
refused to enter the house, and rescued them.
There is a variant in the coast districts on the north bank of the
River Congo, in West Africa. In Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort
(Dennett), p. 49, a girl who had run away from home on account of
her sisters' bad treatment of her, was married to a man who was a
murderer. She wanted to return to her mother, made a flying basket,
and escaped in it, carrying off his ornaments and slaves. Her husband
saw the basket going through the air, and followed it. The girl's
relations received him well, dug a deep hole and covered it with sticks
and a mat, and prepared a great quantity of boiling water. Then they
called the girl and her husband to sit there, placing the man over
the hole. He fell into it, the water and burning wood were thrown
over him, and he died.
This Sinhalese story contains the only instance I have met with in
Ceylon of a belief in power of the lower animals to take the form
of men, with the exception of tales in which they have a removable
skin or shell which hides a human form. In China the fox is thought
to have the power of taking a human shape at will, and in Cinq Cents
Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. i, p. 76, one of these animals
became a man in order to obtain a bag of roasted grain to present to
an aged Brahmana. In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (collected by
Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 442, a man who had learnt witchcraft turned
himself into a tiger in order to eat a calf. He gave his wife a
piece of root first, and told her that when she applied it to his
nose he would become a man again. Such changes as that occur in the
Indian story numbered 266 in vol. iii, and its Sinhalese variants,
in which the animals can then resume their human form.
It is a common belief in Africa that some animals have this power
(having the souls of men in them), and also that human beings can
transform themselves into the lower animals, usually dangerous ones. In
Reynard the Fox in Southern Africa (Dr. Bleek), p. 57, in a Hottentot
story a woman became a lion at her husband's request, in order to catch
a zebra for their food. In The Fetish Folk of West Africa (Milligan),
p. 226, it is stated that "there is a man in the Gaboon of whom the
whole community believes that he frequently changes himself into a
leopard in order to steal sheep and to devour a whole sheep at a meal."