Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/17

Rh a Rakshas. Just see. She has been eating cows, and sheep, and chickens. Just come and see." The Rájá went, and when he saw the blood on his wife's mouth he was frightened, and he thought she was really a Rakshas. The shoemaker's wife said to him, "If you do not cut this woman in pieces, some harm will happen to you." So the Rájá took a knife and cut his beautiful wife into pieces. He then went away very sorrowful. The Phúlmattí Rání's arms and legs grew into four houses; her chest became a tank; and her head, a house in the middle of the tank; her eyes turned into two little doves: and these five houses, the tank and the doves, were transported to the jungle. No one knew this. The little doves lived in the house that stood in the middle of the tank. The other four houses stood round the tank.

One day when the Indrasan Rájá was hunting by himself in the jungle he was very tired, and he saw the house in the tank. So he said, "I will go into that house to rest a little while, and to-morrow I will return home to my father." So, tying his horse outside, he went into the house and lay down to sleep. By and by, the two little birds came and perched on the roof above his head. They began to talk and the Rájá listened. The little husband-dove said to his wife, "This is the man who cut his wife to pieces." And then he told her how the Indrasan Rájá had married the beautiful Phúlmattí Rání, who weighed only one flower, and how the shoemaker's wife had drowned her; how God had brought her to life again; how the shoemaker's wife had burned her; and last of all, how the Rájá himself had cut her to pieces. "And cannot the Rájá find her again?" said the little wife-dove. " Oh, yes, he can," said her husband; "but he does not know how to do so." "But do tell me how he can find her," said the little wife-dove. "Well," said her husband, every night, at twelve o'clock, the Rání and her servants