He was hospitably entertained and stayed there about six months; one of his wife’s brothers was assigned to him as his particular companion and they used to go out hunting together.  They used tigers for hunting-dogs and their prey was men and women, whom the tigers killed, while the bonga took their flesh home and cooked it.  One day when they were hunting the bonga pointed out to the young man a wood cutter in the jungle and told him to set the tiger on to “yonder peacock”; but he could not bring himself to commit murder; so he first shouted to attract the wood cutter’s attention and then let the tiger loose; the wood cutter saw the animal coming and killed it with his axe as it sprang upon him.

His bonga father-in-law was so angry with him for having caused the death of the tiger, that he made his daughter take her husband back to the upper world again.

In spite of all he had seen the young man did not give up his bonga wife and every two or three months she used to spirit him away under the water:  and now that man is a jan guru.

CXLIX.  The Bonga Headman.

Sarjomghutu is a village about four miles from Barhait Bazar on the banks of the Badi river.  On the river bank grows a large banyan tree.  This village has no headman or paranic; any headman who is appointed invariably dies; so they have made a bonga who lives in the banyan tree their headman.

When any matter has to be decided, the villagers all meet at the banyan tree, where they have made their manjhi than; they take out a stool to the tree and invite the invisible headman to sit on it.  Then they discuss the matter and themselves speak the answers which the headman is supposed to give.  This goes on to the present day and there is no doubt that these same villagers sometimes offer human sacrifices, but they will never admit it, for it would bring them bad luck to speak about it.

The villagers get on very well with the bonga.  If any of them has a wedding or a number of visitors at his house, and has not enough plates and dishes, he goes to the banyan tree and asks the headman to lend him some.  Then he goes back to his house, and returning in a little while finds the plates and dishes waiting for him under the tree; and when he has finished with them he cleans them well and takes them back to the tree.

CL.  Lakhan and the Bongas.

Once a young man named Lakhan was on a hunting party and he pursued a deer by himself and it led him a long chase until he was far from his companions; and when he was close behind it they came to a pool all overgrown with weeds and the deer jumped into the pool and Lakhan after it; and under the weeds he found himself on a dry high road and he followed the deer along this until it entered a house and he also entered.  The people of the house asked him to sit down but the stool which was offered him was a coiled up snake, so he would not go near it; and he saw that they were bongas and was too frightened to speak.  And in the cattle pen attached to the house he saw a great herd of deer.