Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/473

Rh venture, for all its inevitability, the action of fate may possibly be avoidable: "Death met him in the street and fate stopt the way (for flight). When thy fate was written had I been by, I would have made a great cry to God and had it written favourably."

The usual way of stating the inevitable is by viewing it as written or decreed by fate. The common expression is: "It was written in my fate; thou canst do nothing." And there also occurs twice in the Legends: "See, this was written in the lines of fate, this misery of mine." A religious fanatic in order to account for his mode of life, says: "Mendicancy was written in my fate:" and it is further said of a herdsman: "God wrote no labour (in his fate); he was to be happy with (tending) buffaloes." Of a parted husband and wife it is said: "This much connection was written; fate hath done this." Again, one of three brothers puts the Panjabi peasant belief very powerfully when he explains to a judge: "Chiefship was written in Chuchak's fate and lordship in Michru's. In my (Kaidu's) fate was written saintship; it was the writing of God."

The decree of fate occupies a prominent position in Indian idea, and typical ways of giving expression to it are such as these: "The decree that fate has written down against me have I suffered to the full." "Queen, if posterity had been decreed in my fate, it would have been through you." "The decree of my fate (leprosy) hath been passed upon me." The commonest expressions of resignation are: "The decree of fate must be borne," and "Pain and grief are with all; it is the decree of fate." The notion has even passed into a frequently recurring proverb: "The decree of fate is strong and waits not for postponing." Cries one of a number of refugees from an unhappy political struggle: "It was fate's decree that drove us to the forest."

Fortune-telling in all its forms involves the intervention of a second party; but forecasts of fortune can also be sought within one's own personality, as it were, by the interpreta-