Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/96

86 castle, and told they must forever remain outside its walls. Then Rāmā (he was married) called his wife Sita to come with him, and with his brother Lakshman returned to the jungle, where they made their abode. The two youths hunted all day long, leaving Sita hidden in their jungle home—not without warning her against a great giant, Ravan, who was always roving about the jungle in search of mischief. They made her promise not to talk to anybody when they, her protectors, were away, and never to move outside a certain mark. But one day Ravan disguised himself as a joghi, and coming to Sita begged of her some fruit. She told him of her promise to her husband, so that she could not step outside the mark to give him fruit. Then the joghi fetched a log and set it on the mark. "Now you can cross," said he. This Sita did, and was immediately seized and carried off by the giant. Greatly grieved were the two brothers upon their return to find Sita gone. They guessed this was the deed of Ravan, and followed in his track by means of shreds and scraps of Sita's clothes which had been caught by the leaves and brambles as she was carried away. Next a little kite whom Ravan had attempted to kill called out to them from above their heads and gave them directions how to find the giant. At last they came to Ravan's country. Here Sita was kept prisoner for eleven years. She was treated by the giant as a daughter, and not unkindly; but she wanted to get away to her husband. And all these years there was great fighting between Ravan and his giant friends and Rāmā and Lakshman. At last the god Hanuman came to help the brothers. He was so strong he could root up whole trees and throw them about, and he would then turn himself into a tiny squirrel, to the astonishment of the giants upon seeing this little animal the only visible author of such fury. Unfortunately the giants succeeded in catching Hanuman and the brothers, and the former they decided to put to death. They were setting about this when the god cried out, "Oh! that is not the way. You must collect a lot of cotton wool, soak it in oil, put it round us in a ring, and then set fire to it." This the giants did, but the cotton had scarcely begun to burn when Hanuman caught up the two brothers and Sita, and with one great bound leapt outside the circle of cotton and ring of gazing giants and took them back to Jesrat's kingdom.