The legends of the Panjâb

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XVI
PEEFACB.
become.
She compassesherobjectbyany foul meansin herpower,
especially by mean and dirty tricks, and nearly always succeeds.
Here she turns up in the story of Sila Dai as the go-between
sent
to the heroine by her enemy to tempt her, but is eminently
unsuccessful after plying her usual arts.
Having got your characters wherewith to start the tale, the
next thing is to set it going. A very common motif is seeking
fortune. For many and various reasons, but always merely preliminary
circumstances
unconnected with the movement of the
real tale, the hero or heroine starts off to seek fortune in folklore
all the world over,—sometimes alone and sometimes with the
companions above described. Raja Rasalu, starting off in an
aimless way with his Carpenter, his Goldsmith and his Parrot, is
a case in point, and it is only by this device that his many
adventures, really a miscellany of unconnected stories, are held
together. Another common device is a dream, and for this purpose
there are warning dreams and prophetic dreams. Thus in
the Legend of ' Princess Adhik Anup Dai ' the hero. Raja Rasalu,
dreams of his future bride, and the story is fairly started, for she,
of course, has to be found . The effects of a dream often also form
the motif of a tale,
or an important incident, and usually thus
the hero has a dream and follows it up religiously, bringing
himself into dreadful trouble, out of which he is eventually
rescued. This is very frequent in Old Deccan Days, and comes
into play in the story of Niwal Dai here. Another universal
device is to summon the absent, which is done by many different
means, but these may be summed up as follows : enchanted
articles, as a fan, a bell, a flower, a pin in a i)ird's beak, a drum,
a horse, flowers floating on the water, a flute, or a ring; crying
in the streets and proclaiming feats, as that hero or heroine
will play at dice with anybody, is a great physician, is selling
wonderful plums or wood at fabulous prices, varied as
answering
a proclamation to do an impossible task ; requesting the
performance of an unintelligible request, as the finding of 'sabr '
of the ' sunjewel box, ' or of ' Ram '
; and lastly miscellaneous
devices.
In his adventures Raja Rasalu takes up Raja Sirkap's
challenge to play at chaupur with him for his head, and wins