Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/691

Rh lation of the passage in which Ālhā kills Chaurā. They are each mounted on an elephant, and Ālhā brings his elephant alongside that of Chaurā. "Ālhā then seized hold of Chaurā and pulled him out of his howdah. He killed him by squeezing him over and over again, so that his blood should not issue. For Devī had given a boon to Chaurā (who was an incarnation of Drona, the Kaurava general in the war of the Mahābhārata) that if a drop of his blood should fall upon the earth, from it countless Chaurās would be created. Therefore Ālhā squeezed him to death, so that no drop of his blood should fall upon the ground."

This story evidently has some connexion with that of Raktabīja and Chāmundā, for the name Chaurā is merely the modern form of the masculine of Chāmundā. The differences are, first, that the methods for preventing the blood falling to the ground are not the same, and, secondly, that the name Chaurā is given to the person slain, and not to the slayer. Further, Chāmundā's swallowing his blood has a parallel in the old woman drinking the blood of Murrogh O'Brien, though the reasons for drinking the blood are different.

I may add that the Thugs worshipped Devī under the name of Chāmundā, and that they strangled their victims, so that their blood should not fall on the ground, because (sic) this was the process adopted by Chāmundā in killing the demon. Here, again, the method of preventing the blood reaching the ground is different, for in the original Devī Mahātmya, Devī, as explained above, swallowed the blood, and did not strangle her victim.

I shall be glad to obtain references to other instances of blood falling on the ground becoming armed men.

Rathfarnham, Camberley, Surrey.