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is coining here, so remain quiet for a moment." Then she continued to cut wood with his axe. And Śringabhuja looked on with a smile on his face. In the meanwhile that foolish Rákshasa arrived there, and lighted down from the air, on beholding his daughter in the shape of a woodcutter, and asked her whether she had seen a man and woman pass that way. Then his daughter, who had assumed the form of a man, said with great effort as if tired, " We two have not seen any couple, as our eyes are fatigued with toil, for we two woodcutters have been occupied here in cutting a great quantity of wood to burn Agniśikha the king of the Rákshasas, who is dead." When that silly Rákshasa heard that, he thought, " What ! am I dead? What then does that daughter matter to me? I will go and ask my own attendants at home whether I am dead or not."*[1] Thus reflecting, Agniśikha went quickly home, and his daughter set out with her husband as before, laughing as she went.
And soon the Rákshasa returned in high spirits, for he had asked his attendants, who could not help laughing in their sleeves, whether he was alive, and had learned that he was. Then Rúpaśikhá, knowing from the terrible noise that he was coming again, though "as yet far off, got down from the horse and concealed her husband as before by her deluding power, and taking letters from the hand of a letter-carrier, who was coming along the road, she again assumed the form of a man.
And so the Rákshasa arrived as before, and asked his daughter, who was disguised as a man— " Did you see a man and a woman on the road?" Then she, disguised as a man, answered him with a sigh,— " I beheld no such person, for my mind was absorbed with my haste, for Agniśikha, who was to-day mortally wounded in battle, and has only a little breath left in his body, and is in his capital desiring to make over his kingdom, has despatched me as a messenger to summon to his presence his brother Dhúmaśikha, who is living an independent life." When Agniśikha heard that, he said, " What ! am I mortally wounded by my enemies?" And in his perplexity he returned again home to get information on the point. But it never occurred to him to say to himself— " Who is mortally wounded ? Here I am safe and sound." Strange are the fools that tin Creator produces, and wonderfully obscured with the quality of darkness
- ↑ * Compare the story of " die kluge Else," the 34th in Grimm's Kinder-und Haus murchen, where the heroine has a doubt about her own identity and goes home to ask her husband, and No. 59 in the same collection. Cp. also Campbell's Tales from the West Highlands, Vol. II, p. 375, where one man is persuaded that he is dead, another that he is not himself, another that he is dressed when he is naked. See also the numerous parallels given in Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, p. 54., Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p, 128) mentions a story in which a woman persuades her husband, that he is dead.
