One night as a man and his wife lay talking in bed, the woman told her husband that she had dreamt that in a certain place she had dug up a pot full of rupees, and she proposed that they should go and look for it and see whether the dream was true.  While they talked, it chanced that some thieves, who had climbed on to the roof, overheard the conversation and at once decided to forestall the others.  So they went off to the place which the woman had described and began to dig, and after digging a little they were delighted to come on a pot with a lid on.  But when they took off the lid an enormous snake raised its head and hissed at them.  At this the thieves cursed the woman who had misled them and agreed to take the snake and drop it through the roof on to the man and his wife as they lay in bed.  So they shut the snake up again and carried it off to the house and, making a hole in the thatch, dropped it through.  But as it fell the snake changed into a stream of money, which came rattling down on the couple below; the thieves found a snake, but it was not a real snake, it was Thakur; and it was his will to give the money to the man and his wife.  When these two had recovered from their astonishment, they gathered up the money, and lived in wealth ever afterwards.

XLVIII.  The King of the Bhuyans.

There was once a king of the Bhuyans and near his palace was a village of Santals; he was a kind ruler and both Santals and Bhuyans were very happy under his sway.  But when he died, he was succeeded by his son, who was a very severe master and soon fell out with the Santals.  If he found any cattle or buffaloes grazing anywhere near his crops, he had the cowherds beaten severely:  so that no one dared to take the cattle in that direction.

The Santals were very angry at this and longed to get even with the Raja; they planned to turn the cattle into the Raja’s crops at night when no one could see them or catch them, but in the end their courage failed them.

One year after the rice had been cut, but before the millet crop was gathered, the youths and maidens of the Santal village had a dance and danced all night till nearly morning; then they agreed that it was not worth while to go to bed and they had better take the cattle out to graze at once.

After grazing their fill, the cattle all collected at the midday resting place and the cowherds were so sleepy after their night’s dancing, that they fell fast asleep on the bare ground.  After a time the buffaloes began to move again and seeing a nice field of millet belonging to the Raja soon made their way to it and grazed the whole field down.  The Raja happened to pass that way and was filled with wrath at the sight; he at once ordered his sipahis to go and beat the cowherds within an inch of their lives and so the sipahis ran to the place with sticks.  Their approach roused the sleeping cowherds who jumped up and ran off home as hard as they could; all but the servant of the village paramanik (assistant headman) he did not run away but went to drive the cattle out of the field; he knew that this was his duty to his master and he was resolved to do his duty even at the cost of his life.