Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/16

4 the wicked shoemaker's wife, instead of giving her to drink, gave her a push and sent the beautiful Rání into the water, where she was drowned. The shoemaker's wife then went back to the Rájá, and, taking his head on her knee, sat still until he woke. When the Rájá woke he was much frightened, and he said, " This is not my wife. My wife was not black, and she had two eyes." The poor Rájá felt very unhappy. "He said, "I am sure something has happened to my wife." He went to the tank, and he saw flowers floating on the water and he caught them, and as he caught them his own true wife stood before him.

They travelled on till they came to a little house. The shoemaker's wife went with them. They went into the house and laid themselves down to sleep, and the Rájá laid beside him the flowers he had found floating in the tank. The Rání's life was in the flowers. As soon as the Rájá and Rání were asleep, the shoemaker's wife took the flowers, broke them into little bits and burnt them. The Rání died immediately, for the second time. Then the poor Rájá, feeling very lonely and unhappy, travelled on to his kingdom, and the shoemaker's wife went after him. God brought the Phúlmattí Rání to life a second time and led her to the Indrasan Rájá's gardener.

One day as the Indrasan Rájá was going out hunting, he passed by the gardener's house and saw a beautiful girl sitting in it. He thought she looked very like his wife, the Phúlmattí Rání. So he went home to his father and said, "Father, I should like to be married to the girl who lives in our gardener's house." "All right," said the father; "you can be married at once." So they were married the next day.

One night the shoemaker's wife took a ram, killed it, and put some of its blood on the Phúlmattí Rání's mouth while the Rání slept. The next morning she went to the Indrasan Rájá and said, "Who have you married? You have