Note 4 — Folk-Lore, Traditions and Superstitions

Once upon a time there lived a man and an old woman. And when they were quite old, the old woman said to her husband, “How shall these our children get food when we are gone?” So the old man travelled afar to the great god Kuvera,4 the god of riches, and taking from him seedlings of paddy, pulse, mustard, and gourds, journeyed for eight days and so reached his home. And after staying a couple of days he set forth to cultivate, taking dry food with him. And first he marked out a piece of rich land by placing boundaries on all four sides of it, and so came home. And again he set out another day with hoe and axe, and cut and burned the jungle, and cleaned the soil, and after worshipping on each side of his field—on the east and on the west, on the north and on the south—he struck one blow with his hoe on each side.