Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/302

 294 hands. Then Hírálál pulled off the bird's wings, and the rakshas's two arms fell off. And then, just as the rakshas reached the door of his house, Hírálál wrung the bird's neck, and the rakshas fell dead."

In the tale of "The Demon and the King's Son," also from Miss Stokes's collection, the prince falls in love with the monster's daughter, who is dead all day and alive all night through her father's magic power. The prince says to her,—"Suppose one day your father made you dead, as usual, and that he was killed before he had brought you to life, what would you do? You would always be dead then." "Listen," she said; "no one can kill my father." "Why not?" said the boy. "Listen," she answered. "On the other side of the sea there is a great tree; in that tree is a nest, in the nest is a mainá (or starling). If any one kills that mainá, then only will my father die. And if, when the mainá is killed, its blood falls to the ground, a hundred demons would be born from the blood. This is why my father cannot be killed." By the aid of a fakir the prince crossed the sea, climbed the tree and took down the nest. "The demon, who was far away, knew it at once, and said to himself, 'Some one has come to catch and kill me.'" He set out at once for the tree. The prince saw him coming, so he wrapped the mainá up in his handkerchief, that no blood should fall to the ground. Then he broke off one of its legs, and one of the demon's legs fell off. Still the demon came on. Then he broke off the other leg, but the demon walked on his hands. The boy saw him come nearer and nearer, so he wrung the bird's head off, and the demon fell dead.

In the Rev. Behari Day's recently issued Bengali Folk-Tales under the head of "Life's Secret," a rajah's favourite wife gives birth, miraculously, to a boy, whose soul is bound up in a necklace in the stomach of a boal-fish. In this instance, as in that of Sodewa Bai, the jewel is stolen, and while worn by the thief the prince is lifeless, but he returns to consciousness with the recovery of his necklace.

Before passing from India one felt curious to know whether tales at all corresponding to these exist in the Buddhist birth-stories. My friend Dr. Rhys Davids informs me that they do not, because the idea of a soul, whether in the body or dwelling in something outside it, is