returned, and a year later his wife bore him a daughter. As the years
passed the little girl grew up. One day she took the lid of the sacred
casket and went with some playmates to play and bathe by the bank of
a river. Suddenly the corpse of a Brahman came floating by. Seeing
it, the little girl took the lid of the casket and for fun began to
splash water on it. Such was the power of the sacred lid, that the
corpse instantly became alive again and became a Brahman, tall as a
tree and beautiful as the sun. The little girl fell in love with him
on the spot and told him that he must become her husband. "But," said
the Brahman, "how shall I manage it?" The little girl said, "Come home
with me at dinner-time, take as usual water [21] in your hand, but do
not sip it. Then my daddy will ask you, 'Bhatji, Bhatji, why do you
not sip the water in your hand?' You must reply, 'I am ready to dine
if you marry me to your daughter. If you will not, I shall get up and
go away.' Then he will consent to our marriage." The Brahman agreed,
and he went home with the little girl, and everything happened as she
had planned. To prevent the Brahman from getting up without any food,
the little girl's father agreed to their marriage. When a favourable
day came they were married, and when she was old enough the little
girl went to her husband's house. As she went she carried off the
lid of the sacred casket of King Upang. But, because it had gone,
her father lost all his wealth and fell once more into the greatest
poverty. His wife went to her daughter's house and asked for it
back, but she refused to give it up. The wife was very angry and
every day began to hate her son-in-law more and more. But for him,
as she thought, the little girl would never have married and would
not have stolen the lid of the sacred casket. One day the wife met
her son-in-law on the road, and she gave him such a fearful slap in
the face that he instantly fell on the ground and became a corpse
again. His mother-in-law then-snatched from him the lid of the casket,