sweetmeats on a tray, and lit a lamp and put it on the tray,[1] and went towards the tomb. The king's army was drawn up in front of it, and the soldiers asked who he was. He replied, "I am a certain merchant's wife; my husband went away on a journey, and I made a vow on this tomb, that if God brought my husband back safe I would have no intercourse with him until I had paid my devotions to the Saint of the Tomb, and had made a distribution of sweetmeats. Now, after many years my man has come back, allow me to fulfil my vow, and pay my devotions according to my faith as a Hindu, and then I can go and meet my husband."
One of them said, "She is but a Hindu trader's wife, let her go." So she took her sweetmeats, and distributed them to the troops, and they ate them, and immediately became stupefied by the drug.
The goatherd went into the tomb, and he gave Naina Bai the clothes and the jewels and the tray, and said, "Get out at once and go to your home." Naina Bai went home, and the two brothers lay down together in the tomb. When day broke the king mounted his horse and came to explore the tomb, but when he explored it he saw nothing but two youths lying asleep! Then he called his soothsayer, and said, "You made a false charge against Naina Bai last night; I'll have you ripped up." Then the soothsayer said: "Dig a trench, and try her by the fire ordeal. Bring Naina Bai and make her walk through the trench (filled with live charcoal), and then, if she is false, do not blame me, and if she is cleared, you are king to do what you please."
So they dug a trench, and filled it with charcoal,[2] and lit
- ↑ The usual practice of sweetmeat sellers.
- ↑ I have met with a case of the ordeal by fire in the present day among the Bozdars, a Baloch tribe of the Sulaiman Mountains. The condition was that the man should walk from end to end of the trench without getting out on either side. He was not expected to escape being burnt.—M. L. D.
