Once upon a time there were two brothers who were very poor and lived only by begging and gleaning.  One day at harvest time they went out to glean.  On their way they came to a stream with muddy banks and in the mud a cow had stuck fast and was unable to get out.  The young brother proposed that they should help it out, but the elder brother objected saying that they might be accused of theft:  the younger brother persisted and so they pulled the cow out of the mud.  The cow followed them home and shortly afterwards produced a calf.  In a few years the cow and her descendants multiplied in a marvellous manner so that the brothers became rich by selling the milk and ghi.  They became so rich that the elder brother was able to marry; he lived at home with his wife and the younger brother lived in the jungle grazing the cattle.  The elder brother’s son used every day to take out his uncle’s dinner to the jungle.  This was not really necessary for the cow used to supply her master with all sorts of dainties to eat, so the younger brother, when his nephew brought out the rice used to give the boy some of the sweetmeats with which the cow supplied him, but he charged him not to tell his parents about this nor to take any home.  But one day the boy hid some of the sweetmeats in his cloth and took them home and showed them to his mother.  His mother had never seen such sweetmeats before and was convinced that her brother-in-law wished to poison her son.  So she took the sweetmeats away and the next day she herself took out the dinner to her brother-in-law and after he had eaten it she said that she would comb his hair and pick out the lice from it; so he put his head on her lap and as she combed his hair in a soothing way he went off to sleep.  When he was asleep the woman took out a knife and cut off his head.  Then she got up and leaving the head and body lying at the place went home.  But the cow had seen what occurred and with her horns she pushed the head along until it joined the neck:  whereupon the man immediately came to life again and learned what had happened to him.  So he drove off all the cattle to a distant part of the jungle and began to live there.

Every day he milked his large herd of cows and got a great quantity of milk; he asked his friend the cow what he was to do with it and she told him to pour it into a hole in the ground at the foot of a pipal tree Every day he poured the milk into the hole and one day as he was doing so out of the hole came a large snake and thanked him for his kindness in supplying the milk and asked him what reward he would wish to receive in return.  Acting on a hint from the cow the man said that he would like to have all the milk back again.  Whereupon the snake vomited up all the milk which it had drunk and died on the spot.  But the milk mingled with poison fell over the man and imported to his body a glorious and shining appearance, so that he seemed to be made of fire.