At last the girl got tired of having only fruit to eat; and demanded rice.  So the monkey took her to a bazar, and leaving her on the outskirts of the village under a tree, he went and stole some pots from a potter and rice and salt and turmeric and pulse and sweetmeats from other shops, and brought them to the girl.  Then she collected sticks and lit a fire and cooked a meal; and the monkey liked the cooked food, and asked her to cook for him every day.  So they stayed there several days.  Then the girl asked for more clothes and the monkey tried to steal them too, but the shopkeepers were on the watch and drove him away.

The girl soon got tired of sleeping under a tree so they went back to the cave and the monkey gathered mangoes and jackfruit and told her to go and sell them in the market and then she would be able to buy cloth.  But when she had sold the fruit, she stayed in the village and took service with a well-to-do shopkeeper, and never returned to the monkey.  The monkey watched for her and searched for her in vain, and returned sorrowfully to his hill; but the girl stayed on in the village and eventually married one of the villagers.

LXXI.  Lakhan and the Wild Buffaloes.

Once upon a time there was the only son of a widow, who used to tend the sheep and goats of a Raja and his name was Lakhan.  One day he harnessed one of the goats to a plough and ploughed up a piece of high land and sowed hemp there.  The crop grew finely, but one night a herd of wild buffaloes came and ate it all up; at this Lakhan resolved to pursue the buffaloes and shoot them.

His mother did all she could to dissuade him but he made up a bundle of provisions, and set off on his journey with a stick, and a bow and arrows, and a flute made of the castor oil plant.  He tracked the buffaloes for some days and one evening he came to the house of an old witch (hutibudhi) and he went up to it and asked the witch if he might sleep there.  She answered “My house is rough and dirty, but you can choose a corner to sleep in; I can give you nothing more, as I have not a morsel of food in the house.”  “Then,” said he, “I must go to bed hungry” and he lay down supperless.

In the middle of the night the witch began to gnaw at Lakhan’s bow and he heard her gnawing and called out “What are you munching?  Give me at bit,” but she answered that it was only a little pulse which she had gleaned from the fields and she had finished it.  So Lakhan said no more; but during the night the witch bit his bow to pieces and when he saw this in the morning, he was very unhappy; for it was useless to find the bison, if he had nothing to shoot them with.

So he went home and had an iron bow and arrows made by a blacksmith, and then started off again.  As before he came to the witch’s house and arranged to sleep there; and in the night the witch tried to bite the bow to pieces, and Lakhan heard her crunching it and asked her what she was eating:  she said it was only a little grain which she had gleaned.  In the morning he found the bow all right, but the witch’s jaws were badly swollen.  Lakhan laughed at her and asked what was the matter and she said that she had toothache.