The poor parents by this time began to feel rather discouraged, but still they made up their minds to persevere and went on to look for the ground-rat.  They found him and offered him their daughter in marriage, but the ground-rat denied that he was the most powerful being on earth, the Musahars were more powerful for they lived by digging out ground-rats and eating them.

The hapless couple went home very dejectedly, reflecting that they had begun by despising their own caste and had gone in search of something greater and had ended where they begun.  So they arranged to marry their daughter to a man of their own caste after all.

Moral You should not despise your own caste or race; you cannot help what caste you are born into.  A Santal may learn to read and write and associate with men of good position and thereby his mind may be perverted.  He may wish to change his caste become a Sadhu, or a Kherwar, or a Boistab, or a Mussulman, or a Christian or anything else; but people will still know him for a beef-eating Santal.  If he becomes a Christian, no one will think him the equal of a Saheb or a Brahman; no Saheb will marry his daughter or give him his daughter in marriage.  Remember what happened to the Musahar, who despised his own caste.  God caused you to be born in a certain caste.  He and not we made the different castes and He knows what is good and bad for us.

LII.  Tipi and Tepa.

Tipi and Tepa dwelt together and lived on baked cakes.  One day they met a bear in the jungle.  “Now I will eat you” growled the bear.  “Spare us,” said Tipi and Tepa “and to-morrow we will beg some food and bake it into cakes and give it to you,” So the bear let them go away to beg; but when they came back they ate the food which they had procured and then hid themselves inside a hollow gourd.  The bear came and looked about for them but could not find them and went away.

The next day Tipi and Tepa again went out begging and as luck would have it again met the bear.  “Now I will eat you” said the bear.  “No” said they “let us go and beg some food for you.”  So they went off begging and came back and baked cakes and ate them and then hid inside the gourd.  The bear came and carried off the gourd on its shoulder and began to pick plums and other fruit and put them into the gourd.  As fast as the fruit was put in Tipi and Tepa ate it up.  “It is a very funny thing that the gourd does not become full” thought the bear.  But Tepa ate so much that at last he burst, with such a noise that the bear threw down the gourd and ran away.

LIII.  The Child with the Ears of an Ox.

Once upon a time a son was born to a certain Raja and the child had the ears of an ox.  The Raja was very much ashamed and let no one know.  But the secret could not be kept from the barber who had to perform the ceremony of shaving the child’s head.  However the Raja made the barber vow not to tell anyone of what he had seen.