While coming along afterwards to the village, they saw Tamarind Ṭikkā in the rice field spreading clothes out, and asked, “Whence, Tamarind Ṭikkā, these clothes?”
Then he said, “Ō! Will people who have to be under foot-bridges become in want of clothes?”
The six uncles said, “Hang us there also, Tamarind Ṭikkā,” and they brought six sacks and gave them to him. So he put the six uncles into the six sacks, and hung them under the foot-bridge, and afterwards cut the fastenings of the sacks. Then the six uncles were carried away down the river, and died in the sea.
The six women (their wives) ran away; their six girls, saying, “Our fathers are going for clothes to wear. Let us go also,” also ran away.
So the six uncles, and the six women, and the six girls all died. Tamarind Ṭikkā, and his wife, and uncle, and aunt, and mother, these five remained.
North-western Province.
In the Jātaka story No. 432 (vol. iii, p. 304), a similar incident to the last one is related. A woman whom her son and his wife thought they had burnt while asleep, frightened a robber when he came to the cave in which she had taken refuge, and thus got his bundle containing jewels. When she returned home next day with the jewels, and was asked by her daughter-in-law where she got them, she informed her that all who were burnt on a wooden pile at that cemetery received a similar present. So she went there, and burnt herself.
In The Story of Madana Kāma Rāja (Naṭēśa Sāstrī), p. 97 ff., a Prince was requested to deliver letters to the departed relatives of all at the palace of the King under whom he was employed, who twice before had endeavoured to kill him by giving him apparently impossible tasks. By the aid of the magical powers of his wives, he jumped into a pit of fire with the letters, and was saved by Agni, the Fire God, who sent him back next day out of the fire, with costly jewels and a splendid dress. All the persons who were hoping to kill him decided to follow his example, and were burnt up. The Prince then became the ruler of the kingdom.
In The Indian Antiquary, vol. iii, p. 11, in a Bengal tale by G. H. Damant, six men burnt a farmer’s house. He loaded two bags of the ashes on a bullock, and on the way met some men driving bullocks laden with rupees, changed two of their bags for his own, met the six men who burnt his house, and told them he got the money by selling the ashes. They burnt their houses and were beaten by people for trying to sell ashes. Then they went to the farmer’s house, tied him, put him in a sack, and threw him into a river. He was saved by a man who was riding past, on his offering to cut grass for his horse without pay. He rode off on the horse, overtook the six men, and informed them that he found the horse in the river, where there were many more. They persuaded him to throw them in, tied in sacks, and all were drowned.