Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/291

 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FOLK-LOKE. 283

her his wife, but she altogether declined to become anybody's wife. Eventually it was agreed upon between the parents that if Lai Deo should deliver up Lai and Mahmud to their parents the Princess Agar should be married to Gul. After much trouble Agar was persuaded to agree to this and to dress and behave as a woman.

12. Masnavi Nal Daman, a Poem on Nal and Daman, by Eahat, published in 1244 a.h., or 1825 a.d., at the ^KTawal Kishor Press, Lucknow: 36 pp. 8vo. It is a translation into very elegant Urdu verse of a Persian work of the same name, which is itself an adaptation of the well-known Sanskrit story of Nala and Dama- yanti. It relates how Nal, Raja of Ujjain, having fallen in love with Daman, the daughter of the Raja of Bandar in the Dakhan, succeeds after many difficulties in marrying her. He soon after- wards dies, whereon she burns herself (sati).

Nal, the Raja of Ujjain, saw Daman, the daughter of the Raja of Bandar in the Dakhan, in a dream, and fell in love with her, and in this was strengthened by the report of one of his courtiers who had seen the beauty himself. Daman had similarly dreamed of Nal, and had fallen in love with him. After this the lovers began to correspond by means of a pigeon which carried their letters. In the end they married. After which Nal neglected his affairs for the society of his bride. His younger brother, seeing his state of mind, induced him to play at backgammon (chausar) with him for his kingdom, and Nal lost the game. So he and his wife had to go into the forests where he lived as a faqir^ and after a time lost Daman. Wandering on alone he was bitten by a serpent and turned into a jet black man, in which condition he wandered on to the cities of Ratbaran and Bandar, where he found his wife living. He induced the serpent, which had turned him black, to restore him to his once fair complexion, and then returned to Ujjain and won back his kingdom from his brother. But soon after this he died, and Daman became sati*

13. SiKANDARNAMA, the Life of Alexander (the Great), by Maulavi Ghulam Haidar, published in 1293 a.h., or 1876 a.d., at the


 * This is a very distorted version of the original Sanskrit legend.