Folklore of the Santal Parganas

by Cecil Henry Bompas

He travelled far and settled down in a place that pleased him. But in a short time the messengers of death came to the Raja’s palace to take him away. When they did not find him, they followed in pursuit along the road which he had taken; they wore the likeness of men and soon traced out the Raja’s son. They presented themselves to him and said that they had come to take him home again. The prince said that he was ready to go, but asked them to allow him to cook and eat his rice before starting. They told him that he might do this if he were quick about it: he promised to hurry, and set to his cooking: he put sufficient rice into the pot to feed them all and when it was ready he offered some to each of the messengers. They consulted together as to whether they should eat it, but their appetites got the better of their caution and they agreed to do so, and made a good meal. But directly they had finished they began to debate what they should do; they had eaten his rice and could no longer compass his death.

So they told him frankly that Chando had sent them to call him; he was to die that night and they were to take away his spirit; but they had made the mistake of eating at his hands and although they must take him away, they would give him advice as to how he might save his life: he was to take a thin piece of lamp-wick and when Chando questioned him, he was to put it up his nose and make himself sneeze. The prince promised to remember this, and that night they took his spirit away to Chando, but when Chando began to question him he made himself sneeze with the lamp-wick; thereupon Chando at once wrote that he should live for sixty years more and ordered the messengers to immediately restore his spirit to its body. Then the prince hastened back to his father and mother, and told them that he had broken through his fate and had a long life before him; and they had better make arrangements for his marriage at once. This they did and he lived to a ripe old age, as he had been promised.

CV. The Messengers of Death.

There was once a Brahman who had four sons born to him, but they all died young; a fifth son however was born to him, who grew up to boyhood. But it was fated that he too should die before reaching manhood. One day while his father was away from home, the messengers of death came to take him away. The Brahman’s wife thought that they were three friends or relations of her husband, who had come to pay a visit, and gave them a hearty welcome. And when she asked who they were, they also told her that they were connections of her husband. Then she asked them to have some dinner and they said that they would eat, provided that she used no salt in the cooking. She promised not to do, but what she did was to scatter some salt over the bottom of the dish. Then she cooked the rice and turned it into the dish and gave it to them to eat. They ate but when they came to the bottom of the dish they tasted the salt which had been underneath. Then the three messengers said “She has got the better of us; we have eaten her salt and can no longer deceive her; we must tell her why we have come.”

So they told her that her son was to die that night and that Chando had sent them to take away his spirit: all they could do was to let her come too, and see the place to which her son’s spirit was going. The mother thought that this would be a consolation to her, so she went with them. When they arrived in the spirit world they told the Brahman’s wife to wait for them by a certain house in which dwelt her son’s wife; and they took the boy to Chando. Presently they brought him back to the house in which his wife dwelt and near which his mother was waiting and she overheard the following conversation between the boy and his wife. The wife said “Have you come for good this time, or must you again go back to the world?”

“I have to go back once more.”

“And how will you manage to return again here?”

“I shall ask for the dust of April and May and if it is not given to me I shall cry myself to death; and if that fails, I shall cry for a toy winnowing fan; and if they give me that, then I will cry for an elephant and if that fails then on my wedding day there will be two thorns in the rice they give me to eat and they will stick in my throat and kill me. And if that does not come to pass, then, when I return home after the wedding, a leopard will kill a cow and I shall run out to chase the leopard and I shall run after it, till I run hither to you.”

“When you come back,” said his wife, “bring me some of the vermilion they use in the world” and the boy promised.