The legends of the Panjâb

SXU
PREFACE.
in the public
choice of a husband by the heroine, seen here in
the Legend of Princess Adhik Anilp Dal.
This is nothing but
the swayamvara of the classics, though generally it has degene'-
rated into the princess having sworn she will only marry him
who can perform certain absurd impossibilities. These often
take the form of riddles, as in the Easalu and Adhik Anup Dai
Legends, or, like Eaja Rasalu, the hero has to do sometliing more'
or less obviously impossible, e.g., to
separate the minute' seeds
of millet from sand, to kill demons, to beat a drum ia heaven^
to cut down a tree with a wax hatchet, to
tame a vicious horse,
to find the silver tree with leaves of gold and flowers of pearl
that grows under the waters, et hoc genus omne. Another
common incident that recalls well-known classics is the common
story of gambling extraordinary. Eaj& EasaM plays Raja
Sirkap at chawpur, first game his
arms, second his horse, third:
his head. The whole game is played in a miraculous kind of
way by both sides, and ends in EasalA's winning- Sirkap'a
head. The same notion occurs twice in Bengal Folktales,
where in one instance it is the heroine, oddly enough, that is
the successful gambler. The dropping of jewels involuntarily
when speaking is a curious and persistent notion, occurring
in every collection. Adhik Aniip Dai fills a basket with flowers
when she laughs and a platter with pearls when she weeps.
Heroes, too, drop rubies when they laugh and pearls when they
weep, and heroines
drop pearls and precious stones when they
walk or speak, constantly in Indian tales. Has not figurative
language here usurped the place of exact description, and the
abstract become the concrete As every hero and heroine has
an enemy, it is due to poetical justice that he shall be punished,
and it is curious to note the forms that vengeance takes in
folklore. Vindictiveness comes painfully to the froB.t here.
The unfortunate enemies are cut to pieces, buried in the desert,
burnt to death and the ashes sent to their mothers, buried up
to the neck in the earth and shot to death with arrows^
buried alive with thorns, buried alive and the grave ploughed
up, buried alive with scorpions and snakes and the grave
walked over by the hero and heroine. In the Rasalfl Legend