Bengal Fairy Tales. Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt
and the kotál. Each of them had a son, and the four young men were great friends. They were very intelligent and learned, and being desirous of completing their education by travelling, they started on an auspicious day for foreign countries. Reaching the kingdom nearest to their own, they heard of its king's fame for justice, and of his keen insight in dispensing it. Being curious to prove the correctness of the report, they resolved to enter his kingdom in disguise, carry on a series of swindles, and see how he detected and punished them.
There was a river on the outskirts of his dominions, which had to be crossed before entering them. The young men, on reaching it, found a boy in charge of the ferry boat. They got into it as passengers, and on inquiry learnt from him that his father had just gone home to snatch a hasty meal, and that he was acting for him. This knowledge was fully utilized by them. They crossed the river, and on landing each gave the boy a cowrie, which was not a current coin. He, as was natural, refused to take these as his remuneration, whereupon the four friends said, "Well, you say your house is on the road which we shall have to pass. Come with us, and when we are near your house, you may call out to your father that we have given you four bad cowries. If he protests against it, you may compel us to pay you to your satisfaction."
The boy agreed to this, and when they came near his home cried out, "Father, four men have crossed the river, and paid me four bad cowries." The intimation was so ambiguously worded, according to the dictation of the friends, that the ferry-man understood that in the cowries his son had received, there were four that were bad, and so he thought little of the matter. But when he came to the ghat and learnt from his son the whole story, he found that he had been imposed upon, and he instantly reported the matter to the king, so that he might know of the arrival of swindlers within his dominions.
The friends, having proceeded further, saw a confectioner's shop, and finding there a man acting as its master, whose very features betrayed that he was a first-class idiot, they proposed to play a trick on him, similar to that which they had played upon the ferry-man's son. Entering the shop, they ordered some good sandesh[1] and ate as much of it as they could. Then, in the course of their conversation with the man, they learnt that not he, but his brother, Juggo, who was then absent, was the owner of the shop. Hearing the name, they said that Juggo was their old friend, and pretended great sorrow at not being in time to meet him. When the man in the shop asked their names, they said they were known as Machees.[2] The conversation having come to an end, they got up from their seats, and were about to leave, when they were asked for the price of the sweetmeats. At this they burst into a laugh, patted the man on the back, and said, "You are Juggo's younger brother, and so ours, and we bless you from our hearts. If our friend were here, he would not let us depart so soon, but would force us to be his guests for weeks and weeks. To spare you reproaches from him, we do not like to pay you anything, for if he learns on returning that you have taken money for the sweetmeats supplied to his beloved Machees, he will be very cross with you. Give him our best love, and say that we intend seeing him on our return." The poor deluded man, on his brother's arrival home, found that he had been cheated. The village Chaukidar was informed of the swindle, and he of course reported the matter to his superiors, and they to the king.
It was manifest, therefore, to the people of the capital that swindlers had found their way into the kingdom, and the king instructed the police to be on the alert. The friends had in the meantime reached the capital, and were making preparations to begin swindling on a grand scale. They had cheated two men, the ferryman and the confectioner, who were illiterate and stupid, but that was nothing in comparison with what they were meditating. At the chief seat of Government the four foremost families were the king's, the prime minister's, the chief merchant's, and the kotál's, and these they selected as their intended victims. Each of the friends was to practise his art of deception on the family of equal rank to his own. In a short time they became masters of the secrets of these families, and began their work, each taking his turn.
First came the turn of the prime minister's son. He on inquiry learnt that his father's equal in the kingdom had a young married daughter, in the full bloom of youth and beauty, whose husband had never visited her after their marriage. With the object of playing her husband's part, and thus defrauding her father of much jewellery and other valuables, the minister's son one evening called at the house of his intended victim, and introduced himself as his son-in-law. The old man was not in a position to judge whether the young man was in reality his daughter's husband or not, for he had not seen the latter since the marriage many years before. But in the circumstances, there was no reason for doubt, since no stranger was likely to venture to make such a pretension.
The prime minister, accordingly, received his supposed son-in-law with great cordiality. The good news was received in the Zenána, which in celebration of the joyous event resounded with the noise of conch-shells and ulús.[3] Great festivities took place, after which the pseudo son-in-law was shown to his apartments, and the ladies busied themselves in decorating the prime minister's daughter as gaily as possible. When she was bedecked to their satisfaction, they took the bashful girl, trembling with emotion, into her husband's apartments and left her with her supposed lord, who on seeing her, became a prey to diverse feelings—admiration at the beauty of the girl before him, pity at the ruse he was practising on the innocent creature, and fear of succumbing to temptation. But however intense his feelings, they soon yielded to his desire for success in the enterprise. Assuming a false gravity and sadness, he thus addressed the girl, "I see you do not value me in the least. Well, I deserve this for not having seen you so long. But surely these are not your best garments. Your jewels are of the poorest kind. This is an insult to me. I will never again touch the threshold of this house, until I can make you fitting presents."
The girl was much affected by this tirade. Sobbing she ran out of the room to her mother, who, on hearing her report, brought out the most precious gems in the house, and bedecking her with them, led her back to her husband's apartments and left her there. Her supposed husband, in order to avoid making any such overtures as might afterwards give rise to scandal, feigned to feel unwell and very drowsy, and fell into a pretended sleep. The girl therefore could not do otherwise than fall asleep too. It was during the small hours of the morning, when dead silence still reigned over the whole house, that the young man quietly rose up, removed the jewels and the rich clothes from the girl's body, and tying them in a small bundle, made towards the gate, and under pretence of some unavoidable and urgent business outside, deceived the guard, and showed a clean pair of heels. Before dawn he met his friends in the house they had hired, and they heartily congratulated him on the success of his adventure.
The prime minister's daughter on awaking, and finding herself alone and bereft of her clothes and jewels, was thunderstruck. With a loud shriek she fell into a swoon. Her parents hurried to her, and it did not take them long to see what had happened. On inquiry, they learnt from her the full details of the case, and the prime minister hastened to the court with the information. He received the sincerest sympathy at having been so mercilessly robbed, and the kotál was at once summoned, apprised of the affairs of the past night, and commanded to exercise great vigilance, so that similar cases might not occur in future.
The four friends were by no means cowards, and especially desired to make a prey of people prepared to oppose them. One of them, therefore, on the morning following the above incidents, called at the court in the disguise of an astrologer, and after the set form of speech peculiar to professors of astrology, said, "O Incarnation of justice! Four dangerous men have entered your majesty's kingdom with the intention of committing mischief. Last night one of them robbed His Excellency the Prime Minister. To-day again, one of them will try to make the chief merchant, Sadágar Maháshai, his victim. I reveal this secret so that your majesty may take means to thwart the wicked man's purpose."
The king dismissed the fictitious astrologer with rich presents, and called on the kotál to keep a special guard round the merchant's house. The whole city was awake, and sentinels paraded the streets, lanes and by-lanes. The prospective hero of the night, the merchant's son, whom we have referred to at the beginning of our story, was in the meantime making preparations to carry out his scheme of robbing the chief merchant in the city. Having ascertained that this man's old mother was a devoted worshipper of the god Shiva, to whom she had built a temple in the