Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/470

 430 The Folklore in the Legends of the Punjab.

origin ; for, as a test before marriage, it is clearly an ordeal in the form of a variant of the impossible task. In this sense it is regarded and repeatedly spoken of as " a virtue of the rulers." Of course, in folktales and legendary lore, the notion is subjected to great exaggeration, and we are favoured with most extraordinary stories of reckless gambling — for property, possessions, and even life itself — ■ and in the Legends, with what is of far more importance, detailed descriptions in all its technicalities of the great and ancient royal game of chaupur or pachisi.

Passing thus without effort almost from the actors to the course of the story, we find that perhaps the commonest way of commencing it is to set the hero seeking his fortunes, either by way of a start to the story, or to get a living, or as the result of troubles at home, or in response to a pro- phecy or fortune-telling. This opens a wide door to pre- liminary incident, even to a relation of invaluable details as to the prescribed modes of procuring oracles and forecasts of fate and fortune, which will be found on examination to be substantially the same all over India, north and south. Such oracles as occur in Indian tales are as vague in form and uncertain in meaning as elsewhere, leaving the inquirer to make what he can of them. A fine specimen, drawn from the working of the Persian water-wheel so universally used in the rural Panjab, and couched in good rustic verse, occurs in the Legend of Mirza and Sahiban, though the hero seems to comprehend it without effort or hesitation :

The axle binds the shaft and the spokes bind the axle ; The axle-tree lies on the ground fastened by strong chains ; Wheel works with wheel as a king with his courtiers ; The whole machine creaks as a beggar among husbandmen ; The pitchers clink (as they come up) full of pure water.

It could hardly be expected that the regular and irregular priesthood of India would allow so fruitful a source of class and personrd profit as is offered by such a matter as fortune- telling to pass them by ; and so we are distinctly told that