Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/531

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Balochi Tales.
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Mitha Khan advised him to strike direct at Dera Ghazi Khan, "for", he said, "when they hear that your army is marching on Dera, everyone will hurry away to protect his home and wife and children, and the Nawab's army will melt away. Then turn and fall upon Jampur, and seize it." ’Abdullah Khan said this was good advice, and he would follow it, so he set his face towards Dera, and the Nawab's army went to pieces. Then ’Abdullah Khan attacked Jampur and took it, and remained there for a month.

A certain Mochi (leather-dresser) who lived at Jampur had a very beautiful wife named Samri, and she was taken prisoner by Muhabbat Khan (’Abdullah Khan's son). After the victory, the army went back again to Khorasan,[1] and Muhabbat Khan took away Samri with him, and made her his concubine, and loved her greatly. Samri's husband followed her up, and went to 'Abdullah Khan at Kilat to complain, and begged him, in God's name, to give him Samri back again; but ’Abdullah Khan said: "Muhabbat Khan is that sort of man, that if he hears that Samri's husband has come, he will just kill you; but this I will do for you. Go round all through my country as far as my Khanship extends, and look round till you find a maiden to suit you, and I give you my word I will marry her to you." But the Mochi said, "I care for no other but Samri."

He stayed for a year at Kilat, but at last he was told to go, and he went away, and came down to the plains to the Shrine of Jive Lal,[2] and there he stayed for a year as a petitioner at the shrine, and fetched water for the pilgrims to the shrine. After a year had passed, one night an order came to him from Jive Lai as follows: "In Jampur there live certain eunuchs, and with them is a poor faqīr who takes out their donkeys to graze. Go to

  1. That is, the plateau above the Sulamian Mountains; what is now Northern Balochistan and Southern Afghanistan, not the Khorassan of our maps.
  2. At Schwan in Sindh.