Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/481

Rh is merely doing in his way what the old heathen Greek, or for that matter the medieval Christian priest, did in his, when he granted asylum or sanctuary to the fugitive or criminal only so long as he could pay for it, and made no sort of effort to shield him or obtain immunity for him when the payment ceased. All this is pithily brought out in a passage in the Legends. Raja Rasalu's faithless wife had successfully hidden her paramour, Raja Hodi, in her husband's house, but Rasalu's faithful parrot betrayed him, and then we read:—"Said the parrot: 'Slay not thy guest, he is as thy brother.' So Raja Rasalu and Hodi went together to the wilds, and there, wounded by an arrow, Raja Hodi was slain."

The very widespread custom, rooted in a superstitious belief that it brings ill-luck, of declining to refer to a husband by name is also mentioned in the Legends; while on the other hand the ancient royal prerogative of releasing prisoners, nowadays in civilised Europe attributed solely to kindliness and mercy, is given in the directest phraseology its right attribution of an act to insure good luck. That very ancient and widespread Oriental emblem of divine protection, the shade-giving umbrella, is repeatedly mentioned, as might be expected, in its degenerated form of a sign of royalty and thence of dignity generally.

Indian folktales end up usually in the most orthodox manner. The hero and heroine live happy ever afterwards after the Indian fashion, which I must remind European readers is not at all theirs, and the villain, male or female, comes to an untimely and well-deserved end. Poetical justice is thoroughly appreciated in the East, perhaps because for so many ages there has been so little of any other description. The interest here is chiefly in the forms that vengeance and punishment take as an indication of the popular notions on the subject. In the Legends and elsewhere punishments are all vindictive and cruel, most ingenious indeed in their cruelty; and torture is solely used as