Note 20 — Chapter II · THE HEROIC AND VILLAGE GODLINGS.

There is a curious legend told to explain the motive of the rite. A childless Râja once threatened to kill all his queens unless one of them gave birth to a child. One of the Rânîs who had a cat, announced that she had been brought to bed of a girl, who was to be shut up for twelve years, a common incident in the folk-tales.20 This was all very well, but the supposed princess had to be married, and here lay the difficulty. Now this cat had been very attentive during this rite in honour of Bhîshma, keeping the wicks alight by raising them from time to time with her paws, and cleaning them on her body. So the grateful godling turned her into a beautiful girl, but her tail remained as before. However, the bridegroom’s friends admired her so much that they kept her secret at the wedding, and so saved the Rânî from destruction, and when the time came for the bride to go to her husband her tail dropped off too. So Hindu ladies use the oil and lamp-black of Bhîshma’s feast day as valuable aids to beauty. Such cases of animal transformation constantly appear in the folk-tales. In one of the Kashmîr stories a cat, by the advice of Pârvatî, rubs herself with oil and is turned into a girl; but she does not rub a small patch between her shoulders, and this remained covered with the cat’s fur.21