In many parts of the Deccan are to be found shrines consecrated to one of the local gods, who has been Brahminically recognized as a local manifestation of Mahdeo, where the annual festival of the divinity was, within the last few years, kept by lighting huge fires, through which devotees ran or jumped, attributing their escape from burning to the interposition of Mahdeo. Except in a few remote villages, this custom, which sometimes led to serious accidents, has in British territory been stopped by the police.
Page [298].—This story of the wonderful child who was found floating in a box on a river is to be heard, with more or less picturesque local variations, on the banks of every large river in India. Almost every old village in Sind has a local tradition of this kind.
Page [305].—Most households in Calcutta can furnish recollections of depredations by birds, at their nest-building season, similar to that of the Ranee’s bangles by the Eagles in this story. But the object of the theft is generally more prosaic. I have known gold rings so taken, but the plunder is more frequently a lady’s cuff or collar, or a piece of lace; and the plunderers are crows, and sometimes, but very rarely, a kite.
Page [313].—Purwaris, or outcasts, who are not suffered to live within the quarter inhabited by the higher castes, are very numerous in Southern India, and a legend similar to this one is a frequent popular explanation of their being in excess as compared with other classes of the population.
HOW THE THREE CLEVER MEN OUTWITTED THE DEMONS.
Page [314].—Old residents at Surat may remember an ancient local celebrity named Tom the Barber, among whose recollections of former days was a chronicle of a renowned duelist, who used to amuse himself by shooting with his pistol, somewhat after the fashion of the Pearl-shooter. The little tin can of hot water which Tom carried, slung from his forefinger as he went his morning rounds, was a favorite mark. So were the water-jars on the heads of the women as they passed the duelist’s house coming from the well; and great was Tom’s relief when an old woman, who could not be pacified by the usual douceur for the loss of her jar and the shock of finding the water stream down her back, appealed to the authorities and had the duelist bound over to abstain in future from his dangerous amusement.
So vivid were Tom’s recollections of his own terrors that, after the lapse of half a century, he could ill conceal his sense of the poetical justice finally inflicted on his tormentor, who was killed in a duel to which he provoked a young officer who had never before fired a pistol.
FOOTNOTE:
[109] An instrument so called from its similarity to a tiger’s claw. It consists of sharp curved steel blades set on a bar, which fits by means of finger-rings to the inside of the hand, so as to be concealed when the hand is closed, while the blades project at right angles to the cross bar and palm when the hand is opened. It is struck as in slapping or tearing with the claws.
