Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/224

 2 1 2 Folk- Tales from the Pan jab.

under the pretence that he was going to spend a few days' hunting. When the party had left the town behind, the Sultan ordered his attendants to pitch the tents and they would begin the hunt next morning.

During the evening the Sultan mounted his horse and came back to the town unobserved, put his horse in the stable and hid himself near the house. When the Sultana had finished her household duties for the day, she came out to the stables, saddled her horse and rode off. The Sultan pursued her, and she went to a thick jungle in the centre of which was a shrine. There was a large fire near the shrine and before it sat a Malang (a keeper of a temple). When the Malang saw her he beat her with a stick, breaking her chura (glass bangles worn by native women), and asked her what she meant by coming so late. She replied that her husband had gone out hunting with his followers and she could not leave home until after he had departed. The Malang then gave her a lesson in witchcraft, and afterwards she returned home. The Sultan instead of going to his palace went to the camp he had left early in the evening.

After a few days the Sultan came home and noticed that his wife the Sultana had bought a new glass bangle in place of the one the old Malang had broken. The first day of his arrival he did not say anything about her midnight visit to the shrine, but the second day he asked her about it, when, in an instant, she turned him into a dog by means of the magic she had learned. The Sultana then caused a proclamation to be issued that whoever saw the dog should pelt it with lumps of earth, so the dog was soon obliged to leave the town. He went to a certain village and stayed in a house occupied by a barber and a butcher, whose two virtuous daughters used to feed him.

One day the barber and butcher, had a dispute as to the ownership of some property, and they decided it in this way. They would both call the dog at the same time, and whoever the dog went to should have the whole property. The dog, who quite understood all that was said, went to the butcher, when called, and always lived with him.

One day the butcher asked his daughter why the dog was so