The Leopard and the Princess

In a certain country there are seven Princes, it is said. Younger than all seven there is their younger sister. For the seven Princes seven Princesses have been brought; a Prince having been brought for the younger sister, is settled there.

While they are thus, the younger sister has pregnancy longings (doladuk). One day, while the younger sister and her elder brothers were going to their houses, having seen the whole seven Princesses eating Dam̆ba [fruits] the younger sister also stayed there to eat them, and asked at the hand of the eldest sister-in-law, “Sister-in-law, a Dam̆ba fruit for me also.”

Then the sister-in-law said, “There will not be Dam̆ba here to give.”

She asked at the hand of the next sister-in-law. That sister-in-law also replied in the same way. Thus, in that manner having asked at the hand of the whole seven, not even one person gave it.

Afterwards, the younger sister having cooked and eaten, went alone to pluck Dam̆ba, and having ascended the Dam̆ba tree, while she was eating Dam̆ba it became night.

A Leopard having come near the Dam̆ba tree [said], “[How] if you should throw down a Dam̆ba branch with your golden little hand?”

After that, the Princess threw down a Dam̆ba branch. The Leopard having eaten [the fruit on] it, said again, “[How] if you should throw down a Dam̆ba branch with your golden little hand?”

Again she threw one down. Then the Leopard said, “Holding fast, fast, [how] if you should slowly slowly descend?”

Then through fear the Princess is there without descending.

The Leopard another time said, “Holding fast, fast, [how] if you should slowly slowly descend?”

The Princess descended. Then the Leopard, placing the Princess on his back, went to his rock cave. While living in that manner the Princess bore a child. The Leopard and Princess stayed there very trustfully. The Leopard had much goods. The paddy store-rooms had been filled, the millet store-rooms had been filled, the menēri store-rooms had been filled, there are many cattle.

When they had been living there many days, the Leopard said, “I am about to go on a journey to-morrow; I shall be unable to return for two or three days. You, shutting the rock cave, must be [here]. Until the time when I come do not go outside.” On the following day the Leopard went away.

Well then, while the Princess was alone in the rock cave, the elder brothers of the Princess having come hunting, a great rain rained. The Princes having been [sheltering] near a tree, when they were walking along in the rain they met with the rock cave, and saw also their younger sister.

“What art thou here for? We sought and sought so much time, and could not find thee. Here thou art! What was the manner in which thou camest here?” they asked at the hand of their younger sister.

Then the younger sister said, “I asked for Dam̆ba at the hand of sisters-in-law. The whole seven did not give it. On account of that I came to eat Dam̆ba, and while I was alone in the Dam̆ba tree the Leopard came.

“Afterwards he told me to throw down a Dam̆ba branch; I threw down two Dam̆ba branches. Saying and saying [it was only] until the time when the Leopard was going, I stayed in the tree.

“While I was there it became night. Then the Leopard told me to descend. I stayed [there] without descending. The Leopard told me twice to descend. Afterwards I descended. The Leopard, putting me on his back, came here. From that day I am living here.”

Then the Princes asked, “Where is the Leopard?”

The Princess said, “This morning he went somewhere or other; he said he will not come for a day or two.”

After that, the Princes said, “No matter for that one; let us go away home. We will take the things that are here.”

The Princess said, “I will not.” What of her saying, “I will not!” The Princes, having taken all the [household] things that were there, said to the Princess, “Let us go.”

Afterwards the Princess through anger cut that child, and hung it aloft, near the hearth. She placed the small pot on the hearth, and taking a [piece of] muslin, all along the path tore and tore and threw down pieces, until the time when they went to the house. Having gone there, without eating she is crying and crying.

Then the Leopard came near the rock cave, and saw that the child having been cut had been hung up; and having seen, also, that the Princess was not there, came away.

Having come all along the path on which the muslin has been torn and thrown down, and having come up to the house [in a human form]; he saw that the Princess is there. While the Leopard is in the open space in front of the house, the Princess saw that the Leopard is [there]; and having come laughing, and given water to the Leopard to wash his face, and given sitting accommodation, and betel to eat, she is cooking in order to give the Leopard to eat.

Then the Princes placed an earthen pot of water on the hearth, to become heated. After it became heated, they cut a hole very deeply, and put sticks on it, and above that leaves, and above that earth; and having taken the pot of water and placed it there, they came near the Leopard, and said to the Leopard, “Let us go, brother-in-law, to bathe.”

The Leopard said, “I cannot bathe, brother-in-law. As I was coming I bathed; I cannot bathe another time.”

While the Leopard was saying he could not, having gone calling the Leopard they told him to place his feet at the place where those sticks and leaves and earth have been put; and having told him to bend, they poured that pot of boiling water on the Leopard’s body. That one having fallen into the hole that was cut deep, died. Those seven Princes having thrown in earth and filled it up, came away and ate cooked rice.

That younger sister, having cooked and finished, seeks the Leopard. While she is seeking him the sisters-in-law say, “Sister-in-law, you eat that cooked rice. Elder brother is eating cooked rice here.”

The Princess is [there] without eating. While she is there the sisters-in-law say again, “Sister-in-law, eat; elder brother is eating cooked rice here. He will not come there, having become angry that you have come [away].”

After that, the Princess came to look [for him]. Having looked at the whole seven houses without finding the Leopard, she went to the place where he bathed, and when she looked [saw that] earth was [newly] cut and placed there.

Having seen it, thinking, “Here indeed having murdered him, this earth has been cut and placed [over him],” she went into the house, and did not eat; and having been weeping and weeping, and been two or three days without food, the Princess died through very grief at the loss of the Leopard.

The eight Princes and the seven Princesses, taking the Leopard’s goods and the Princess’s goods, remained there.

North-western Province.

In The Indian Antiquary, vol. xiv, p. 135 ff. (Folklore in Southern India, p. 116), in a Tamil story by Naṭēśa Sāstrī, a girl who had married and gone off with a tiger disguised in the form of a Brāhmaṇa youth, escaped when her three brothers, in response to her request sent by a crow, came to rescue her. She first tore in two the tiger cub she had borne, and hung the pieces to roast over the fire. The tiger followed in the form of a youth, was well received, and food was cooked. On the pretext of giving him the customary oil bath (of Southern India) before dining, the brothers put sticks across the well, and laid mats over them. When the tiger-youth sat there for the bath he fell into the well, which they filled with stones, etc. The girl raised a pillar (apparently of mud) over the well, with a tulasī (basil) plant at the top; and during the rest of her life she smeared the pillar in the morning and evening with cow-dung, and watered the plant.

In the Kolhān folk-tales (Bompas), appended to Folklore of the Santal Parganas, p. 454, a tiger which assisted a Raja by carrying a load of grass for him, received in marriage one of the Raja’s daughters as a recompense. He ate her, and when he went to ask for another in her place, saying she had died, boiling water was poured over him while he was asleep, and he was killed. At p. 470, a Raja married a she-bear which took the place of his bride in her palankin; apparently the bear had a human form.

In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 57, the concealed pit-fall into which people fell is found. It was dug in one of the rooms of a merchant’s house. A King, his son, and his wife the Queen were entrapped; but the King’s daughter-in-law suspected some trick, refused to enter the house, and rescued them.

There is a variant in the coast districts on the north bank of the River Congo, in West Africa. In Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort (Dennett), p. 49, a girl who had run away from home on account of her sisters’ bad treatment of her, was married to a man who was a murderer. She wanted to return to her mother, made a flying basket, and escaped in it, carrying off his ornaments and slaves. Her husband saw the basket going through the air, and followed it. The girl’s relations received him well, dug a deep hole and covered it with sticks and a mat, and prepared a great quantity of boiling water. Then they called the girl and her husband to sit there, placing the man over the hole. He fell into it, the water and burning wood were thrown over him, and he died.

This Sinhalese story contains the only instance I have met with in Ceylon of a belief in power of the lower animals to take the form of men, with the exception of tales in which they have a removable skin or shell which hides a human form. In China the fox is thought to have the power of taking a human shape at will, and in Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. i, p. 76, one of these animals became a man in order to obtain a bag of roasted grain to present to an aged Brāhmaṇa. In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (collected by Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 442, a man who had learnt witchcraft turned himself into a tiger in order to eat a calf. He gave his wife a piece of root first, and told her that when she applied it to his nose he would become a man again. Such changes as that occur in the Indian story numbered 266 in vol. iii, and its Sinhalese variants, in which the animals can then resume their human form.

It is a common belief in Africa that some animals have this power (having the souls of men in them), and also that human beings can transform themselves into the lower animals, usually dangerous ones. In Reynard the Fox in Southern Africa (Dr. Bleek), p. 57, in a Hottentot story a woman became a lion at her husband’s request, in order to catch a zebra for their food. In The Fetish Folk of West Africa (Milligan), p. 226, it is stated that “there is a man in the Gaboon of whom the whole community believes that he frequently changes himself into a leopard in order to steal sheep and to devour a whole sheep at a meal.”