In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 57, the concealed pit-fall into which people fell is found. It was dug in one of the rooms of a merchant’s house. A King, his son, and his wife the Queen were entrapped; but the King’s daughter-in-law suspected some trick, refused to enter the house, and rescued them.
There is a variant in the coast districts on the north bank of the River Congo, in West Africa. In Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort (Dennett), p. 49, a girl who had run away from home on account of her sisters’ bad treatment of her, was married to a man who was a murderer. She wanted to return to her mother, made a flying basket, and escaped in it, carrying off his ornaments and slaves. Her husband saw the basket going through the air, and followed it. The girl’s relations received him well, dug a deep hole and covered it with sticks and a mat, and prepared a great quantity of boiling water. Then they called the girl and her husband to sit there, placing the man over the hole. He fell into it, the water and burning wood were thrown over him, and he died.
This Sinhalese story contains the only instance I have met with in Ceylon of a belief in power of the lower animals to take the form of men, with the exception of tales in which they have a removable skin or shell which hides a human form. In China the fox is thought to have the power of taking a human shape at will, and in Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. i, p. 76, one of these animals became a man in order to obtain a bag of roasted grain to present to an aged Brāhmaṇa. In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (collected by Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 442, a man who had learnt witchcraft turned himself into a tiger in order to eat a calf. He gave his wife a piece of root first, and told her that when she applied it to his nose he would become a man again. Such changes as that occur in the Indian story numbered 266 in vol. iii, and its Sinhalese variants, in which the animals can then resume their human form.
It is a common belief in Africa that some animals have this power (having the souls of men in them), and also that human beings can transform themselves into the lower animals, usually dangerous ones. In Reynard the Fox in Southern Africa (Dr. Bleek), p. 57, in a Hottentot story a woman became a lion at her husband’s request, in order to catch a zebra for their food. In The Fetish Folk of West Africa (Milligan), p. 226, it is stated that “there is a man in the Gaboon of whom the whole community believes that he frequently changes himself into a leopard in order to steal sheep and to devour a whole sheep at a meal.”
No. 160
The Story of the Foolish Leopard
In a certain country, at the season when a Gamarāla and his son are causing cattle to graze, having constructed a fold in a good manner the Gamarāla encloses the cattle in the fold.
One day, the Gamarāla’s son having driven in the cattle, while he was blocking up the gap (entrance) of the fold the Gamarāla said, it is said, “Aḍē! Close the gap well; leopards and other animals (koṭiyō-boṭiyō[1]) will come.”
When he was there, a big Leopard which was near having heard this speech that he is making, thinks, “The Leopard indeed is I; what is the Boṭiyā?” In fear, with various ideas [about it], he got inside the fold; but having thought that the Boṭiyā will come now, he went into the midst of the calves, and in the middle of them, his happiness being ended, he remained.