Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/32

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24
FOLK-LORE IN MONGOLIA.

and whoever first caught him should be given the stone. They prepared to race; then Bandē swallowed the stone and disappeared. He came to the territory of a certain khan. In a poor tent lived an old man and an old woman; he lived with them; the old man adopted him as a son to his house. Bandē spit and vomited gold. The old man took the gold to the khan to ask him for his daughter for wife to Bandē. The khan wished to see Bandē himself with his own eyes. Bandē vomited out some gold before the face of the khan. The daughter of the khan ordered him to be bound with a horse-girth, and, having given him salt water, flogs him with a whip; out flew the stone from him. The khan's daughter seized the stone and swallowed it. Bandē returned to his old man and said that he had lost the power of procuring gold. "What are we to do now?" says the old man. "Make an ass's saddle and bridle," said Bandē. When the things were prepared Bandē went to a tree and sat down. At that time the khan's daughter with twenty virgins went out to play with the white tree. Then Bandē began to read a writing which had been read out to him in his sleep, when he in the time of his poverty had once slept in the road under the tree. By this reading, the khan's daughter, who was pregnant because she had swallowed the precious-stone, was changed into a she-ass. Then the other maidens seeing only the she-ass, and not seeing the khan's daughter, were frightened; but Bandē saddled the ass and rode off; he rode for a month; then the ass was wearied out and could go no farther. Bandē left her and proceeded on foot to a certain town where he became a Lhama (a Buddhist priest). The ass which he left behind gave birth to two boys—one good, the other evil. The following generations were all likewise twins. They all became rich, had much gold, silver, cloth, tea, &c. From them came the Chinese nation.—(Daba, a Khalka man of Khêbē Tushe gun Gachoun, on the north slope of Tsastu Bogdo.)

22. Gakhai (the Pig), the Father of the Kirghis Nation.

Ginghis Khan built a Pēr; then his son made a house of the materials. Some bad women smeared the back of the thief with soot.