Santal (South Asian people) -- Folklore; Santali literature -- Translations into English; Tales -- India
"Oh! my brother, the water reaches to my neck,
"Oh! my brother, the water reaches to my neck,
"Still, Oh! my brother, the pitcher will not dip,
"Still, Oh! my brother, the pitcher will not dip."
At length the water became so deep that she felt herself to be
drowning, then she wailed as follows;--
"Oh! my brother, the water measures a man's height,
"Oh! my brother, the water measures a man's height,
"Oh! my brother, the pitcher begins to fill,
"Oh! my brother, the pitcher begins to fill."
The pitcher filled with water, and along with it she sank and was
drowned. The bonga then transformed her into a bonga like himself,
and carried her off.
After a time she re-appeared as a bamboo growing on the embankment
of the tank in which she had been drowned. When the bamboo had grown
to an immense size, a Jugi, who was in the habit of passing that way,
seeing it, said to himself, this will make a splendid fiddle. So one
day he brought an axe to cut it down; but when he was about to begin,
the bamboo exclaimed, "Do not cut at the root, cut higher up." When
he lifted his axe to cut high up the stem, the bamboo cried out,
"Do not cut near the top, cut at the root." When the Jugi again
prepared himself to cut at the root as requested, the bamboo said,
"Do not cut at the root, cut higher up;" and when he was about to
cut higher up, it again called out to him, "Do not cut high up,
cut at the root." The Jugi by this time was aware that a bonga was
trying to frighten him, so becoming angry he cut down the bamboo at
the root, and taking it away made a fiddle out of it. The instrument
had a superior tone and delighted all who heard it. The Jugi carried
it with him when he went a-begging, and through the influence of its
sweet music he returned home every evening with a full wallet.
He now and again visited, when on his rounds, the house of the
bonga girl's brothers, and the strains of the fiddle affected them
greatly. Some of them were moved even to tears, for the fiddle
seemed to wail as one in bitter anguish. The elder brother wished
to purchase it, and offered to support the Jugi for a whole year,
if he would consent to part with his magical instrument. The Jugi,
however, knew its value, and refused to sell it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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