Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/68

60 get away whole and sound my friend will not, I feel sure, be safe from harm, I'll put them to death." Then he cut off the heads of both with his claws, just like cutting off a lotus-bud (from its stalk) with a sharp pair of shears, and deprived them of life. The female crow, moreover, fled from that place.

The Bodhisat, impaling the body of the serpent with a stick, threw it into the jungle and let the golden crab go into the water. When he had bathed he went straight to the village of Sâlindiya; and from that time forward there existed greater intimacy between the crab and the farmer.

There is a variant of this Jâtaka tale in the story of (Temple's Legends of the Panjâb, p. 45), wherein a scorpion takes the place of the crow and a hedgehog is substituted for the crab. He (Râjâ Sarkap) sent a messenger to the old woman and told her that if she wished to please him she was to take Râjâ Rasâlu into a certain garden where lived a venomous snake, and to make the snake bite and kill him. So the treacherous old woman took the râjâ into the garden, and gave him a place in it to live in. There the râjâ dwelt, and one day after his breakfast he lay down to sleep about noon. Now, in that garden dwelt too things of evil omen: one was a scorpion called Kalîr, who scooped out men's eyes, and the other was a serpent called Talîr, which sucked out men's blood. When Kalîr the scorpion saw Râjâ Rasâlu asleep he went to Talîr the serpent and said: "Here is a man asleep. You go and bite him and suck out his blood, and I will eat out his eyes."

Then Talîr the serpent came down from his shîsham tree, and, having bitten Râjâ Rasâlu, climbed up again quickly. And then Kalîr the scorpion called out to his brother scorpions and went with them to eat out the râjâ's eyes.

Meanwhile the hedgehog which Râjâ Rasâlu had saved from the river was out eating fruit in the garden. Suddenly he heard the crows making a noise over head, and thought that most likely