Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/453

 The Folklore in the Legends of the Panjab. 413

{ded) may be looked on as being on the borderland between the two, and as belonging as much to the one side as he does to the other, occasionally exhibiting the characteristics of the ogres as clearly as he does those of the saints, heroes, godlings, and what not.

In translating rdkhas in its varying forms, I have adhered to the usual term ogre, as being its best European represen- tative, both expressions indicating, as I take them, the foreigner who has at one time inspired fear, and has, there- fore, been credited in the popular imagination with certain terrifying supernatural powers, attributes, and habits. The essentials of Indian ogre-stories seem to be constant. The ogre feeds on mankind, an idea extended to feeding vora- ciously on the larger animals also. He worries the hero's people and friends, and he is finally conquered by the hero, in fair fight, by miraculous intervention, or by conventional exorcism. He is, of course, a giant, and supernaturally endowed, performing much the same miraculous feats as his heroic or saintly opponents. In many respects he may be fairly described as the hero on the other side, his attributes as the result of the fear he inspires, and the struggles with him as vague memories of long past tribal fights with remarkable foreigners.

In one notable passage, showing how ideas extend and run into each other, in a fragment of a modern version of the far renowned (in India, that is) Sindhi story of Sassi and Punnun, we find that ogres and man-destroying monsters of all kinds are closely classed together. The fragment is based on the very celebrated (in India) poem by Hasham Shah, and for the present purpose I will quote the original :

Adamkhor jan&war jal de, r&kas rilp sarden ; Majarmachh, kachhti, jal-hfiri, ndg, sansar balden ; Tandiic, kakar, zambiiran-iudle, idwan zor taddcn.

Man-eating monsters of the deep, like unto ogres ; Alligators, turtles, mermaids, serpents, and world-horrors ; Crocodiles, dragons, porpoises, were bellowing aloud.