Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/426

402 wretched brute will live in this condition several days; in winter it soon dies frozen." The wolf seems fully to return the antipathy, for (chapter xi.) he says, "It is remarkable wolves in Mongolia attack men rather than animals. They may be seen sometimes passing at full gallop through a flock of sheep in order to attack the shepherd."

8. Tschin-tâmani, Sanskrit, "thought-jewel," a jewel having the magic power of supplying all the possessor wishes for. Indian fable writers revel in the idea of the possession of a talisman which can satisfy all desire. The grandest and perhaps earliest remaining example of it occurs in the Ramajana, where King Visvamitra = the universal friend, who from a Xatrija (warrior caste) merited to become a Brahman, visits Vasichtha, the chief of hermits, and finds him in possession of Sabala, a beautiful cow, which has the quality of providing Vasichtha with every thing whatever he may wish for. He wants to provide a banquet for Visvamitra, and he has only to tell Sabala to lay the board with worthy food, with food according to the six kinds of taste and drinks worthy of a king of the world. She immediately provides sugar, and honey, and rice, maireja or nectar, and wine, besides all manner of other drinks and various kinds of food heaped up like mountains; sweet fruits, and cakes, and jars of milk; all these things Sabala showered down for the use of the hosts who accompanied Visvamitra. Visvamitra covets the precious cow, and offers a hundred thousand cows of earth in barter for her. But Vasichtha refuses to part with her for a hundred million other cows or for fulness of silver. The king offers him next all manner of ornaments of gold, fourteen thousand elephants, gold chariots with four white steeds and eight hundred bells to them, eleven thousand horses of noble race, full of courage, and a million cows. The seer still remaining deaf to his offers the king carries her off by force.

The heavenly cow, however, in virtue of her extraordinary qualities, helps herself out of the difficulty. It is her part to fulfil her master's wishes, and as it is his wish to have her by him she gallops back to him, knocking over the soldiers of the earthly king by hundreds in her career. Returned to her master, the Brahman hermit, she reproaches him tenderly for letting her be removed by the earthly king. He answers her with equal affection, explaining that the earthly king has so much earthly strength that it is vain for him to resist him. At this Sabala is fired with holy indignation. She declares it must not be said that earthly power should triumph over spiritual strength. She reminds him that the power of Brahma, whom he represents, is unfailing in might, and begs him only to desire of her that she should destroy the Xatrija's host.