Would you like to know how these stories are told? Come with me, and
you shall see. There! take my hand and do not be afraid, for Prince
Hassan's carpet is beneath your feet. So now!--'Hey presto!
Abracadabra!' Here we are in a Punjabi village.
* * * * *
It is sunset. Over the limitless plain, vast and unbroken as the
heaven above, the hot cloudless sky cools slowly into shadow. The men
leave their labour amid the fields, which, like an oasis in the
desert, surround the mud-built village, and, plough on shoulder, drive
their bullocks homewards. The women set aside their spinning-wheels,
and prepare the simple evening meal. The little girls troop, basket
on head, from the outskirts of the village, where all day long they
have been at work, kneading, drying, and stacking the fuel-cakes so
necessary in that woodless country. The boys, half hidden in clouds
of dust, drive the herds of gaunt cattle and ponderous buffaloes to
the thorn-hedged yards. The day is over, the day which has been so
hard and toilful even for the children,--and with the night comes rest
and play. The village, so deserted before, is alive with voices; the
elders cluster round the courtyard doors, the little ones whoop
through the narrow alleys. But as the short-lived Indian twilight
dies into darkness, the voices one by one are hushed, and as the stars
come out the children disappear. But not to sleep: it is too hot,
for the sun which has beaten so fiercely all day on the mud walls, and
floors, and roofs, has left a legacy of warmth behind it, and not till
midnight will the cool breeze spring up, bringing with it refreshment
and repose. How then are the long dark hours to be passed? In all
the village not a lamp or candle is to be found; the only light--and
that too used but sparingly and of necessity--being the dim smoky
flame of an oil-fed wick. Yet, in spite of this, the hours, though
dark, are not dreary, for this, in an Indian village, is
_story-telling time_; not only from choice, but from obedience to
the well-known precept which forbids such idle amusement between
sunrise and sunset. Ask little Kaniyâ, yonder, why it is that he, the
best story-teller in the village, never opens his lips till after
sunset, and he will grin from ear to ear, and with a flash of dark
eyes and white teeth, answer that travellers lose their way when idle
boys and girls tell tales by daylight. And Naraini, the herd-girl,
will hang her head and cover her dusky face with her rag of a veil, if
you put the question to her; or little Râm Jas shake his bald shaven
poll in denial; but not one of the dark-skinned, bare-limbed village
children will yield to your request for a story.
No, no!--from sunrise to sunset, when even the little ones must
labour, not a word; but from sunset to sunrise, when no man can work,
the tongues chatter glibly enough, for that is story-telling time.
Then, after the scanty meal is over, the bairns drag their
wooden-legged, string-woven bedsteads into the open, and settle
themselves down like young birds in a nest, three or four to a bed,
while others coil up on mats upon the ground, and some, stealing in
for an hour from distant alleys, beg a place here or there.
The stars twinkle overhead, the mosquito sings through the hot air,
the village dogs bark at imaginary foes, and from one crowded nest
after another rises a childish voice telling some tale, old yet ever
new,--tales that were told in the sunrise of the world, and will be
told in its sunset. The little audience listens, dozes, dreams, and
still the wily Jackal meets his match, or Bopolûchî brave and bold
returns rich and victorious from the robber's den. Hark!--that is
Kaniyâ's voice, and there is an expectant stir amongst the drowsy
listeners as he begins the old old formula--
'Once upon a time--'